BOOK REVIEW: The Last by Hanna Jameson @hanna_jameson #bookbestiesthelast

My mind is still reeling from Hanna Jameson’s post-apocalyptic mystery novel, The Last!

I read this one with my bestie Berit and wow did we love it!!This book just defies a genre, if I’m being honest. Is it post-apocalyptic? Locked-room mystery? Psychological thriller? I’d have to say it is a blend of all three, with a focus on the deep psychological impact of humanity pushed to it’s breaking point. A truly captivating writing style made this one unputdownable for me. I loved it!

About the Book

For fans of high-concept thrillers such as Annihilation and The Girl with All the Gifts, this breathtaking dystopian psychological thriller follows an American academic stranded at a Swiss hotel as the world descends into nuclear war—along with twenty other survivors—who becomes obsessed with identifying a murderer in their midst after the body of a young girl is discovered in one of the hotel’s water tanks.

Jon thought he had all the time in the world to respond to his wife’s text message: I miss you so much. I feel bad about how we left it. Love you. But as he’s waiting in the lobby of the L’Hotel Sixieme in Switzerland after an academic conference, still mulling over how to respond to his wife, he receives a string of horrifying push notifications. Washington, DC has been hit with a nuclear bomb, then New York, then London, and finally Berlin. That’s all he knows before news outlets and social media goes black—and before the clouds on the horizon turn orange.

Now, two months later, there are twenty survivors holed up at the hotel, a place already tainted by its strange history of suicides and murders. Those who can’t bear to stay commit suicide or wander off into the woods. Jon and the others try to maintain some semblance of civilization. But when the water pressure disappears, and Jon and a crew of survivors investigate the hotel’s water tanks, they are shocked to discover the body of a young girl.

As supplies dwindle and tensions rise, Jon becomes obsessed with investigating the death of the little girl as a way to cling to his own humanity. Yet the real question remains: can he afford to lose his mind in this hotel, or should he take his chances in the outside world?

Reflection

Historian and academic Jon documents the story of a small group of strangers staying in a hotel outside of Zurich after nuclear attacks have taken out most of the major cities in the world. I loved the way the chapters were written, labeled in days after the world ended. The majority of the novel has a very locked-room, vintage Agatha Christie sort of feel to it, as Jon and some of the other men in the hotel discover a child’s body on the roof. The implication being that she must have died on the day or just after the world ended, therefore the murderer is one of them.

But the murder plot is in some ways secondary to the story of this post-apocalyptic world they live in. To me, the murder was important to the story primarily because it was the mechanism that allowed Jon to interview and investigate the other people left behind in the hotel, and to document their stories. In fact, the sense that this might be some of the only documentation of people’s lives from before the world ended was so captivating, I could scarcely put the book down!

I thought Jameson did a masterful job exploring the psychology of people put in this situation. How do we retain a sense of morals, when our very survival is on the line and when there is very little risk of punishment for doing things we wouldn’t have dared to do before? And we see the full range of how people behave as the book goes on. People question who should be saved? What would we be willing to do to ensure our safety and survival? And what is our true character?

Indeed, towards the end of the book Jon has a fascinating discussion with another character about qualities in himself, both good and bad, that he would have never known he possessed before all of this. There’s also the sense that we don’t know our true priorities until we lose everything.

And of course, the mystery is solved, so it comes full circle in terms of the plot. But I wouldn’t say the dead body is the most intellectually fascinating part of this book! The characters themselves and the situations they are in are what drives this story forward and kept me coming back for more. And the ending of this one was jaw-dropping! With a mix of futuristic apocalyptic survival thrills, and vintage locked room mystery, Hanna Jameson has written a unique and captivating novel that I anticipate being a favorite of many readers this year!

Thank you to Gallery Books for my copy. Opinions are my own.

I read this with my book bestie Berit at Audio Killed the Bookmark! Check out her review here!