This debut apocalyptic thriller features a dystopian society set in a futuristic Great Britain, the last remaining habitable country on a planet that slowed its orbit to a dead stop. Thirty years after the slowing began, the earth's remaining population now resides only in the area of continual sunlight with temperatures that are able to allow the production of food and the continuation of human life. Things are not good in this new world order and only those who are towing the political line, working ceaselessly and keeping the borders secure are surviving, but barely. Everyone who tried to flee to relocate to Great Britain on ships from other continents was sunk into the ocean and channels surrounding that country. Isolationism is paramount. The USA has a toehold in the southernmost part and are holding their own. Now they need more resources and are about to make a deal with the British government -- but Prime Minister Richard Davenport, the man who engineered the survival of the country -- wants America's nuclear weapons in exchange for more food and resources. But there might yet be hope to save the planet. Dr. Ellen Hopper, a scientific officer stationed out in the North Sea, has been contacted to the deathbed of her former teacher from her Oxford Days. He has information he needs to give her. Helicoptered to the hospital by security agents, Ellen is unable to get what she needs when he dies and soon finds herself targeted by the government and pursued as she attempts to figure out what is meant from a single clue. Can she do it? NO SPOILERS.

The premise was good, the futuristic aspect was chilling, and the writing was excellent. The story, however, moved very slowly and it seemed to take forever to get to the gist of the secret. I both love and hate the world building in novels that portend a hideous and bleak future for humankind. I'm still holding out for a new world that is more like the Jetsons (old TV show I never missed) and less like the collapse of knowledge and civilization -- barren wasteland of the nearly dead and starving. I have no idea if the science that explained the whole situation is accurate, but could appreciate the concept of half the world in eternal darkness and the other in nonstop sunlight, massive cold, blistering deserts that encroach the land mass, falling oxygenation, etc. Dismal. The basic narrative line has a lone woman facing off against nearly insurmountable odds to find some hope. I did enjoy this overall but definitely would have liked a more definitive ending as it seems to conclude rather abruptly after all the build-up. The descriptions and detail were good in some areas but deficient in others. Then again, I don't think the book needed more pages. Not sure how apt the title is either.
Anyway, I'll be eager to read more reviews of this one.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dutton/Penguin Random House for this e-book ARC to read and review.

Fantastic novel. The plot, pacing, character development, dialogue - all were excellent. This view at a future apocalypse is told with verve, with world-building that makes you truly believe something like this could happen. The author's tale of how people would react, in ways both good and bad, is grounded without being something you've read a thousand times over.

The Last Day by Andrew Hunter Murray is a sci-fi thriller, though to be honest I found both elements (the science and the thrills) to be a bit slight and while it’s a highly readable work, I’d call it moderately engaging or tense.

The book opens some decades after “The Slow” (or “The Stop”), when the Earth’s rotation gradually declined then halted altogether, plunging half the planet — the “Coldside” into uninhabitable cold and darkness and the other half into a baking sunlit zone. The UK found itself in the goldilocks zone and is one of the lucky few places on the planet that is relatively habitable, though it keeps itself going only by a ruthless rejection of refugees, a staunch coastal defense, and a move to a totalitarian regime. Even so, despite the government’s propaganda, people can sense that things seem to be falling apart, with food shortages, forced labor, earlier and earlier conscriptions into the army, and bands of wild folk roaming the spaces between towns. Ellen Hopper, a scientist studying the new ocean currents, is abruptly helicoptered from her Arctic rig to London by government security at the dying request of her old tutor Edward Thorne, a surprise to Ellen since the two hadn’t parted on good terms. Before he passes, Thorne reveals he is in possession of a great secret, one the government is desperate to get its hands on (Thorne had been forcibly ousted from his role as advisor to the Prime Minister/dictator 15 years earlier). The meeting with Thorne sends Ellen on a path that has her dodging (not always successfully) brutal government agents as she works with her ex-husband, an editor at the Times, to find out Thorne’s potentially world-shattering secret.

The story is told via a third-person limited narrative that follows Ellen in real time, while periodically flashing back to her time at Oxford and her early relationship with Thorne. The voice is smoothly fluid, easy to follow, and gives a nice glimpse into Ellen’s character even as she faces a number of chases, escapes, deaths and near-deaths, and frequent tense, adversarial encounters.

Despite relatively few descriptive passages, Murray does an effective, efficient job of conveying in few words the current plight of society. A short scene shows “criminals” (trials now last minutes) being force-marched off to work in the Breadbasket, a brief attack in the woods conveys the desperation of former re-settlers, a quick salvage of canned goods from a ghost ship makes clear the worrisome shortages of food. World-building is thin, but sufficient.

Ellen is a solid enough character; it’s easy to root for her perseverance in the face of great risk, and she’s fleshed out via her current and past relationship with her ex-husband David, as well as with her brother Mark, who works in the security department. David is a likable companion and evokes a similar underdog response in the reader via his desire to do actual journalism under a government that doesn’t allow it. Thorne is disappointingly flat and feels more like a plot precipitator than a character. That’s even more true for the dictator Davenport, who plays no active role but is constantly referenced, where he comes off as a cipher at best and a convenient boogey-man at worst.

The pace moves along easily and smoothly, but I wouldn’t call it fast-paced as it felt there was a noticeable amount of wheel-spinning. Some information comes a bit awkwardly, there are a few contrivances, several implausible decisions/actions, and I have to say I called the big reveal way back toward the start of the novel, diluting its impact more than a little. But the story never bogged down, and I never felt torn about finishing it.

In the end, The Last Day was another in a long line recently of “solid” reads — books that kept me interested enough to keep going, didn’t display any major flaws, but never grabbed me and pulled me forward through the story, found me captivated by the characters, or wowed by the language. Thus, solid.

In the not so distant future, the world has really become a place of haves and have nots. It’s been decades since the planet stopped rotating, leaving one side of the world in permanent cold and darkness. The other half, which consists of the new United States and southern Great Britain (which is now a U.S. territory) has cut off the rest of the world, caring only for the people within its borders. Ellen Hopper gave up on the United States years ago, disgusted with the cruel and dictatorial government. She lives on a rig in the cold and bitter Atlantic and is content to stay that way until she gets a visit from the government. She’s escorted to London to meet with her dying college mentor, where she uncovers a secret so profound that the very future of humanity is at risk. Murray’s description of this future United States government is terrifying, all the more so because now, it seems entirely too possible