Historian Jon Keller, was attending a conference in Switzerland having breakfast in the hotel when news broke that there have been nuclear attacks on numerous cities across the world. Keller and a number of his fellow guests and some of the hotel staff decide to stay put in the hotel whilst others decide to ‘make a run for it’. Keller and his companions have been surviving for nearly two months on the supplies left in the hotel when a young girl’s body turns up in a drinking water tank and Keller alarmingly realises that the killer may still be among them.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced read copy of this book in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

This was a compelling story and I found myself wondering what I would do in these circumstances, scary. Excellent storyline and a believable concept. Well described characters that made the story seem real. Rather abrupt ending.

I’m a little late on reviewing this ARC even though I did read it before the release date.

Why am I late in reviewing? Life, mainly. It gets in the way sometimes. The second reason was because I struggled to think of what to say about The Last.

I know I enjoyed it. I know that I couldn’t wait to see how it would end because I genuinely couldn’t work out where the author was going with the story. But I also think I enjoyed it more for the sum of its parts rather than as a whole and it’s hard to put into words as to why.

The majority of the characters are awful. I don’t mean that they are awful characters, but they are awful people. The circumstances in which they find themselves bring out the worst in the them, the protagonist included. This I don’t mind. I don’t necessarily like wholesome characters. If you don’t either then you’re good with this one because I wouldn’t say anyone here is wholesome.

Our main character Jon is trying to work out who murdered a young girl in post Apocalyptic Zurich but his reasons aren’t exactly noble. He’s not driven by a sense of justice for the child but more a sense of boredom and desperation for him to be relevant amongst the group of survivors. If justice is a side order of his amateur investigation then great, but the main dish is his validation.

The path he takes as self assigned ‘detective’ means he has access to the range of characters and they are a varied bunch. Via his questioning of them Jon manages to obtain a sense of who they are and establishes a bond with those he connects with.

Again, not all are wholesome. If you don’t like self-centred and self-serving characters (either as a main character or secondary) than the people here are going to piss you off.

But it wasn’t the characters that felt a little lacking to me or the setting (a creepy hotel surrounding by forest in isolated Zurich) or even the plot because like I said, I was gripped for the most part.

So what was lacking?

This is a book that doesn’t know what it wants to be.

Is it an introspective look at human nature when we are at our very worst? A social commentary on the political climate of the times we live in and the repercussions of governmental and voting decisions? A post apocalyptic horror that wants to be The Walking Dead without the zombies? Or is it a crime thriller?

I actually thought it would be more the latter and if you are also thinking this and are going into The Last hoping that’s the case then I think you’ll be disappointed. I liked the introspective look at what humanity might be like after it all goes wrong but aside from the dead girl acting as a plot device for Jon and to be included in a dubious ending then it’s really not about the murder at all.

For me, The Last painted a situation that felt real in the event of a nuclear apocalypse. Medical supplies dwindling, toxic rain, extreme paranoia, and characters who feel that they get to determine how their new society is constructed. Guy worried about the amount of ‘breeding females’ there are and whether he’ll get access to them? Creepy. But I feel worryingly realistic.

The book took a strange turn a third of the way towards the end with the introduction of a plot more akin to something you would find in The Walking Dead and the weirdest resolution to the murder that just felt like an anti-climax. If you skimmed past any of the stories that the characters tell Jon about their pasts (like me) then your first reaction to the ending will be confusion.

The seed of the resolution is planted in an obscure story told by one of the other characters which was so obscure you wouldn’t think it would have any connection. But it did. So there’s that.

If you want a genre confused book with asshole characters that is somehow surprisingly gripping, this is your book. If you want a straight up murder crime thriller then this isn’t your book.

I liked it and I liked what it was trying to do but sometimes I wondered if it was trying too hard and so as a whole it didn’t quite stick together.

I really enjoy both post-apocalyptic fiction and murder mysteries, so this mash-up should’ve been right up my alley, and I did sort of enjoy it, but it did take me a lot longer to read than usual and I feel deeply disappointed by the ending. The premise was intriguing - a group of survivors wait out the end of the world in an isolated hotel, but it’s like the author couldn’t work out how to wrap it up so just stopped.

Jon Keller is an American historian who has travelled to Switzerland for a convention, and is just about to leave the hotel to return home to his family, whom he left on bad terms, when news comes through that many major cities have been nuked, and then the Internet goes down. Unsure whether he will be able to get anywhere, he and about 30 others decide to stay in the hotel, since they at least have food and power, but as the days pass and no help arrives, despair sets in for many. When the body of a child is found in a water tank, Jon, who is already chronicling their lives in his diary, decides to solve her murder, but someone seems determined to stop him.

This was an unusual take on the EOTWAWKI as a diverse group of people from different countries are forced to co-exist while not knowing how long they can survive, cut off from the news and all other people. Having most of the characters, including the narrator, be quite unpleasant and unreliable made it actually more interesting, but I felt frustrated not finding out what actually caused the war or who the aggressors were, as there were hints that it didn’t occur completely out of the blue. There were plot lines that didn’t go anywhere and an “is that it?” ending, so I can only give this 3 stars despite wanting to rate it higher for originality.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the arc in exchange for an honest review.
The Last is available now.

Jon Keller is at a conference in Switzerland at L’Hotel Sixième when the world ends. He is just trying to survive in this strange land but he comes across the body of a young girl, he’s convinced someone in the hotel is the killer.

So I have mixed feelings about this book, which is making writing this review quite hard but I’ll try my best!

The characterisation is really strong, with each character different and unique, if not all that likeable.

We see the whole story through Jon’s diary. He claims that he’s writing it down for historical purposes but like when he starts investigating the little girls death it’s more about keeping his sanity than anything else.

The hotel is almost like a character itself. A blood soaked history, with murders, suicides, even a serial killer stayed there once! I feel that this could have been played with a little more, really amping up the horror factor.

I have to be honest as a piece of dystopian fiction it’s great, as a mystery, which is what I expected it to be from the blurb...not so much. I almost DNF at 40%, but I kept on just because I really wanted to find out what happened to the little girl, yet in the ending for me, felt a little lacklustre.

I’d recommend this to people who love a realistic dystopian novel with complex and intriguing characters.

The Last is just way too believable, from start to finish.

The story is told in the diary-style narrative of Jon Keller as he attempts to impartially record the end of the world (as we know it).

Jon is a bit of an odd character, adapting to everyone around him; swallowing his emotions; and volunteering for everything, in a manner that suggests his narrative may be more self-serving than reliable in places, or that he is seriously overcompensating for something.

All of the characters introduced here are complex and feel ‘real’ to the reader, whether likeable or not. Actions and motives are not always clear because the reasoning behind them is as convoluted or obscure as in reality, and no one is bad or good, just motivated differently and acting from different interests. Hanna Jameson’s exploration of the different reactions that such a severe stress situation could have on individuals felt thorough and thoroughly believable, and had me analysing where my own character would fall in the survival spectrum (I don’t think I would have lasted past Day 1, for the record!).

Whilst the story does feature post-apocalyptic survival, that is not where the plot focus lies, with resource-finding taking a back seat to the emotional pressures and food/water/medicine never seeming quite as important to survival as finding the right personal motivation and your own mental stability. Thus Jon’s focus on finding out who the unknown girl is, and who murdered her, seems much more vital to his continued existence as a human being than mere physical necessities. I found this a fascinating and compelling viewpoint and it really made me ponder exactly what would be important to me in the end days. Most stories assume that survival instincts would take the steering wheel, but the urge to behave in human ways can be a strong one…

I went into The Last expecting it to be a kind of post-apocalyptic And Then There Were None, but this is not that story. Instead it is a pressure-cooker of a psychological thriller, slowly simmering towards its boiling point, and also a deeply thoughtful look into human values and priorities under pressure. I found it impossible to stop reading, and after the last page I almost wanted to search for the ‘survivors’ on social media to see what happened next, as I was so invested in their stories!

Fans of psychological mysteries and realistic survival stories will enjoy this thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking book.





A strange noise erupted from one of the tables, a shrill exclamation. The woman didn’t say anything, just cried out.
I looked up, and she was sitting with her partner – I assume – and staring at her phone.
Like everyone else in the room, I thought she had just become overexcited by a message or a photo, and returned to my book, but within seconds she’s added, ‘They’ve bombed Washington!’
I hadn’t even wanted to go to this damn convention.

– Hanna Jameson, The Last

Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog

Well, don’t you just hate it when you are staying in a nice hotel and nuclear war breaks out?

First impressions can count for a lot. But gosh, this book starts slowly with a prologue and then changes down a gear when the ‘novel proper’ starts. This is arguably the most dramatic event that could possibly occur on our planet yet following near total nuclear devastation the main character, Jon, spends much of his time navel gazing, drinking and taking drugs including crystal meth which he describes as ‘surprisingly nice’!

There are a lot of drug references in this book which at first I just put down to rules and concerns being reconsidered in an apocalyptic vision. But narratively the drugs had to be available from somewhere in advance of the ‘surprise’ of the apocalypse as these wouldn’t be commonly stocked in a hotel. Drug references don’t generally bother me in the right context and I can consider them speaking to the situation of a novel but when the drug being referenced is crystal meth, its virtues are being extolled and it is spoken of as being ‘surprisingly nice’ I think we are overstepping the mark and possibly straying into the territory of agenda. This section concerned me somewhat.

There are also a few too many under-researched parts to this novel that took me straight out of the narrative – if a story contains elements that are obviously and immediately factually incorrect or simply unbelievable I find it very difficult to remain immersed in the constructed reality of the novel, which after all is the point of a novel. An example of this is an odd section where two characters, one a medical doctor, talk about getting high on children’s paracetamol!? The doctor then states that she is not sure if it is possible to overdose on this. That is not a doctor I would want to put my trust in.

However, the description of the events of apocalypse and its effects on individuals are handled well, particularly when related to the internet and social media and Western cultures reliance on technology. This is how we get our news and how we relate to each other and so this section of the book was very believable.
But when the apocalyptic narrative starts to run out of steam, a murder mystery strand of the novel is instigated where our hero Jon sets himself up as the detective. This is what had piqued my interest initially and made me choose to read this book, but it surprisingly adds less to the story than should have been the case and simply allows further opportunity for Jon to wander aimlessly between rooms and between hotel ‘guests’ asking rather inane questions.
This genre crossing element should have been the crux of the book; the reason required for the lead protagonist to ask difficult questions and record the answers given and so find an ultimate answer. Unfortunately the idea that should have set this book aside from other similar novels instead feels tacked on, an afterthought, and excuse to make sense of the journal form of the novel.

Without giving away the full plot of the novel, in the end most of the storylines are drawn together to give some form of resolution but this is done through a number of quite implausible and out-of-place scenes which feel as though they are included for the sole purpose of concluding unresolved storylines rather than developing the story. Ultimately and disappointingly, the book finishes with a ‘that’ll do’ conclusion.

I know I am probably being overly harsh with my criticisms but I was very much looking forward to this novel and so feel more disappointed as a result. There are some new ideas in this novel and some humour in here as well and it is obviously a heart-felt book but to be honest, reads quite like a high school student has been given the task of coming up with a story about a nuclear apocalypse. It is not fair to compare this to McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ (not exactly a fast-paced action adventure itself) but it is hard not to make that comparison and The Last doesn’t come out of that comparison well.

I’m sorry – this promised so much but left me unfulfilled and frustrated.

Hanna Jameson's The Last is an interesting one. The plot follows a group of strangers isolated in a remote Swiss hotel when nuclear bombs destroy the world. Few of the guests have little chance of ever going home -airports were destroyed and society rapidly disintegrates - so they make the most of a bad situation and turn the hotel into a new home for the new world order.

The writing was clean, characters varied and interesting, and most of the cliches of the post-apocalyptic genre were nimbly avoided.

My main issue is with the whodunit mystery aspect - it seemed shoehorned in to give the plot a focus, then didn't go anywhere, and ended with a very contrived conclusion. Also, the theory that the world could be destroyed by nuclear bombs seemed overplayed - yep, long-term damage would be brutal in an all out exchange, but I'm pretty sure few bombs would land in the southern hemisphere meaning large parts of the world would still be inhabitable. At one point in the novel it's reported Scotland has been destroyed: no-one would level Scotland - the highlands are so sparsely populated you'd only be killing a handful of people with each bomb!

That said, I did enjoy it, a solid 4 stars, just don't think about the realities too hard or it'll break your suspension of disbelief.

This was so gripping from the start and so different from anything I've read before. I really hope there will be a sequel as I need to know what happens next.

A few things drew me to this book - first, Emily St. John Mandel's quoted glowing review because I LOVED 'Station Eleven' and this looked to be in the same vein, and secondly, the fact that the synopsis pointed towards a post-apocalyptic murder mystery. That's certainly an interesting way to combine genres and I'm all for it! It had been a long while since I'd read a dystopian novel so I was excited by this one.

I did like Jameson's writing style - told in the form of a historical journal, Jon Keller gives his account of the seventy or so days that follow after Nuclear war ravages most of the world and he is left, with a small band of survivors, stranded in a hotel in Switzerland. Of course, different cultures and personalities clash and ally throughout this novel and it certainly is powerful in the political and ideological reflection it provokes. This would make a great read for a book club, accompanied by discussion as the group face many challenges and controversial decisions throughout the novel. I liked the way that it built up to it's climax, though the pacing was slow.

I think my main issue with the book came from the fact that I did not like ANY of the characters. At all. Jon spent most of the time pitying himself and his situation, mulling over all of the mistakes that he made in his family life prior to the explosion. The people he meets were also extremely unlikeable - Tomi, the 'tough-girl' who had an attitude and opinion on everything and everyone, Peter who was awful for no reason whatsoever, Dylan who seemed to think it was a great idea to keep everything from everyone but of course had nothing to hide, and - you get the idea. Everyone seemed unnecessarily rude and seemed to accept their situation a bit too quickly, and Jon spent the whole book basically saying 'I didn't like what they said, but I saw their point of view'. Also, and this is the important one, I was mostly turned off by the solution to the murder mystery. It was weak and random after so much build towards it.

Although this is a fictional novel, it's a very relevant story. A nuclear bomb goes off in Washington after a controversial election, and a lot of protesting from some Americans and the rest of the world. The president is killed. Jon is away at a conference, staying at a hotel in Europe in the middle of nowhere. He is alone and away from his family. More bombs go off, but it is hard to tell what is happening in the rest of the world when the internet connection and any link to the outside is quickly lost.

Many people staying in the hotel leave immediately, but a few stay. These people start trying to live together, at what they assume is the end of the world. Jon is a historian, so he tries to keep a diary of what is happening day by day. He speaks to other people in the hotel and they tell him stories about themselves and their lives, hoping that they won't be forgotten and perhaps needing to let some things go.

This is a really well written book. It isn't complicated or pretentious, but it is very thoughtful. It is quite slow moving, but so is the pace of life in the hotel. Things do happen, however, and the tension, fear and suspicion builds to various points of climax as things progress. The characters are all quite unknown because the story is told from Jon's point of view, and he doesn't know anyone well. He only knows what he learns from watching and speaking to the other people in the hotel. This is a big part of the story really, because a lot of strangers being thrown together are always going to have secrets, and they are never all going to get along.

This is mainly a story about what happens to Jon and the other survivors in the hotel. But it is also a provocative piece about current politics and more generally our modern lives. Living without phones, internet or social media, or even music is explored. Jon and the other guests have many thoughts about their lives and what they have done, as you obviously would in this scenario. It is quite philosophical at times, but not overwhelmingly so, and not too intellectual so as to detract from the story.

I enjoyed this book. As I said before, it is quite slow-paced, but it is an interesting take on the end of days, when compared to your usual zombie or testosterone-filled tales of action and danger. This is more about fear, suspicion, and what it means to be at the end of modern society. I also really loved the ending - no spoilers! But the last page or so really made this book complete for me.

Really enjoyed this entertaining and intelligent novel. A different twist in the normal end of the work books. Option for a follow up. I would like to think so

This is not the kind of book I would usually read but I got it on netgalley - it was a good read about what might happen following an 'end of the world nuclear bomb'. We follow Jon's narrative of the next 75 or so days as he documents what happens to him next. He is at a hotel for a convention and rather than leave he stays there. It explores ideas such as the lack of communication as the internet goes down as well as no media coverage and the inability to use a mobile phone. In the idst of this he tries to solve a murder and who did it. I would read another book by this author.

I was loving this book until about 55% in. The story was really promising and I loved the characters and the way they were all developing. But from around the half way mark it seemed to stall and the rest of the book seemed to drag on unfortunately. I was also really disappointed by the ending with a lot of things either hastily or not properly wrapped up.

Turns out I am quite the morose little creature, because recently I have found myself really loving anything with a post-apocalyptic theme to it. Perhaps its just because, at the moment, it really isn't too much of a stretch of the imagination, that something like this could happen. I also love books that look at how people react when the world as they know it has been ripped out from under their feet. When there is no more information sharing online, no instant communication at our fingertips and no governments or societal structures left to protect people. It's so interesting to think how people might react once they really have to fight for their own survival.

In 'The Last' we are immediately into the action, as while at breakfast in a hotel in Switzerland, the news breaks around our protagonist Jon, that several nuclear weapons have gone off around the world. Inevitably within hours all forms of communication are cut off and there is no way of knowing whether anyone else has made it, or if the inhabitants of the hotel are all that is left.

Throw into all of this, that they discover the body of a girl (in an eerily similar discovery to that of the real life disappearance of Elisa Lam - tip, don't go following that one if you're easily creeped out!) and you have end of the world drama tied up with a classic murder mystery - really what's not to like?!

Jameson's writing is fantastic. There are quite a lot of characters to get your head around, especially in the beginning but she does a great job of slowly introducing them and helping you to keep their identities and alliances clear. (And the alliances are going to turn out to be really important....)

Genuinely chilling in parts as the author manages to explore the whole range of emotions that humans are likely to go through when faced with 'the end of the world'. It was devastatingly sad to consider the people who give up almost straight away. The great thing about these survivors all staying in a hotel together was that it acts like a microcosm of society, and amongst this defined group we get to see all the different ways people react and what they value under these circumstances.

The protagonist Jon, is (deliberately I think) a bit of a sanctimonious idiot sometimes, but for the most part he comes across as a reliable narrator, despite the assertions of some of the other residents that he is starting to lose the plot. The friendships built between some of the characters felt really genuine and it was easy to understand how strong bonds could be made under such circumstances.

There are some really horrifying moments as the darker side of what humans will do to survive is uncovered (think about what they might turn to, to eat, when there is nothing else available and try not to vomit in your own hands) but none of this goes into explicit detail.

It's just sufficiently harrowing enough, but there is also plenty of uplifting moments and real warmth and humour amongst the survivors. The only down side was the ending, which seemed in a bit of a rush to wrap itself up and the final explanation of the murder was unsatisfactory for me.

If you enjoy anything mildly post-apocalyptic, or dystopian, with a real focus on relationships and human interactions, this will be right up your alley.

Jon is staying at a hotel in Switzerland when the world has devastation unleashed in the form of nuclear bombs. His family are on the other side of the world and Jon can't contact them to see if they survived. He joins forces with a group of guests to survive, but the discovery of a young girl's body makes him determined to find out what happened.

All the elements were there; post-apocalyptic setting, rumours of hauntings, a murder, and plenty of suspects - unfortunately the story turned out to be rather less than the sum of its parts. The murder investigation quickly stalled and then went nowhere in particular, whilst the post-apocalyptic story line showed promise, but many of the interesting angles went unexplored. Were there additional people living in the hotel that the main group were unaware of? What was the point of bringing up the supposed hauntings and then doing nothing with them? Also I found the main character had little charisma to make you root for him to prevail. I was disappointed overall.

TW: suicides and drug use.

Thanks to NetGalley and publishers, Penguin Books UK / Viking, for the opportunity to review an ARC.

This is a story about the band of survivors in an isolated hotel in Switzerland during a nuclear world wide disaster. Had it been left there this book had potential but the introduction of a body and the lead character Jon trying to discover who, who and when falls flat as a sub-part of the story. I did feel that it was fairly realistic as to how such an event may occur and what the reactions of the people would possibly be. Cannabilism to survive being one of them.. The characters were diverse and well described, although I felt them flat and could not get a picture of them in my mind. This was not a great book for me as I found it long winded, certainly not gripping. Two stories entwined into one but not to me very successfully..

Next for Sophie was The Last by Hanna Jameson. This post-apocalyptic tale is set in a Swiss hotel where a group of guests and staff have holed up after seeing nuclear bombs drop on the world’s major cities via their phones and TV. The group gradually declines in number leaving a core of around 20 trying to survive together as they have no better place to go.

The book’s protagonist is Jon, a history professor from San Francisco who was staying at the hotel because of a conference. After the group discovers the body of a little girl in one of the water tanks on the roof, Jon makes it his mission to find out who killed her. He also decides to keep a record of each day beginning with the day the bombs drop and his record is the book itself. The Last is frighteningly insular as the group of strangers tries to figure out how to work together despite not really knowing or trusting one another. It’s a slow-burning tale of fear where everyone has read Lord of the Flies and finds themselves wondering if the person in the next room is going to be the first to turn savage.

Throughout the book, Jon interviews his fellow guests and we begin to get a sense that everyone in the hotel was “meant” to be there that day. There are characters with unnerving stories to tell, and Sophie was looking forward to seeing how all these threads came together, which made it all the more disappointing when they just… didn’t. The girl’s killer made very little sense and many of the threads were simply left hanging.

Sophie found the ending of The Last to be a letdown on what had, otherwise, been a great book, and she doesn’t know if she can recommend it simply because of that.

First of all the cover of this book is amazing. That's what made me click on it and read the synopsis, it's gorgeous. I wanted this book to be great and oh gosh it was. I don't read many dystopian books but after reading this i'm going to have to change it. I loved how realistic it felt. How disturbingly authentic the story was. It unsettled me and i know a book is good when it does that.

A gripping story let down by its final act. 4/5 stars.

This is certainly an attention-grabbing scenario! You may read the blurb and think, “yeah, but how real will the story seem?” The answer? Scarily so. Maybe it’s because the narrator is a historian and attempting to record everything as factually as possible that makes the narrative feels very realistic. The reactions of all the characters to the end-of-the-world scenario are believable and as varied as they are. The hotel guests are an interesting mix of nationalities and personalities which makes for some dramatic clashes. Also, obviously, being cut off from the world with winter setting in and food supplies dwindling puts pressure on everyone that has to boil over in places.

Add to an already tense situation the discovery of a child’s body and the suspicion there’s a murderer somewhere in the hotel (who may even be undiscovered – it’s such a huge building, they could be lurking!) and the story becomes incredibly gripping. There are also effectively spooky sections: The Shining is referenced in places, which helped me picture long deserted corridors with goodness knows what skulking round every corner. A few nail-biting scenes feature footsteps heard in dark corridors and being in a room as the door handle starts to rattle.

Although this is all a hypothetical situation, the author is clearly rooting her narrative in present-day events. Several references are made to the US President having set the disastrous chain of nuclear events in motion and, while it’s never made explicit, it’s easy to assume the current US President is the one they have in mind. I also felt the way we’re told events played out on social media was spot on: I think we can all imagine how the world will end not with a bang, but with a series of notifications. Indeed, by about halfway through I did start to wonder if I should buy a few more powerbanks and hoarde toothpaste.

So far, so great. Unfortunately, I felt everything began to unravel at around 80% into the book. Up to this point I had been thoroughly gripped. There was terrific potential for the plot strands to play out in many exciting ways, but I felt the ending was rather flat and rushed.

On the positive side, everything does get wrapped up neatly. So if you hate open endings, you don’t have to worry about that! I just hoped all the mysteries, chilling discoveries, suspicions, drama, people shouting and pointing guns at each other would lead to a more explosive conclusion. I’ll leave it there to avoid spoilers, but I was just disappointed that the story didn’t go somewhere spectacular.

Overall: an explosive opening leads into a gripping story with interesting characters which is sadly let down by a flat finish.