What was most impressive about this book for me is the fact that one can almost smell and feel the air of Galveston, Texas where I have never been to. I could imagine the stickiness of the atmosphere, laden with moistures and on-coming danger of a hurricane. I also liked it focuses Filipino American family (along with Mexican Americans) and a reader can be exposed to their cultures. I like learning about different heritage, so this book was fascinating from that stand point, and made me want to visit Galveston.

I also liked the prose and carefully used descriptions. Some sections are very poignant, and felt well-researched. Characters are interesting; however, there are too many to track for me. So it happened, I just finished Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad, which was written from points of views of twelve inter-connected characters. Similar to Egan's book, I ended up having to draw charts to keep track of characters, I felt this was cumbersome largely because I listen to audiobook while I am running and don't have a pen and paper at hand. Unlike Egan's work, Garza's novel eventually goes back to some of the main characters (Jess, Carly, and Magdalena- apologize if spelling is incorrect as I was listening to an audiobook), but this somehow felt disjointed, because I didn't get to know these characters when I wanted to know more about them. By the time their stories come back after reading about other characters' stories, I 'personally had difficulties keeping these stories straight. I would much rather to focus on a few characters and dig deeper into them. This, of course is highly subjective, and maybe I just prefer simpler structures.

Overall, I would rate this book 3 to 3 1/2 stars, which would be a comparable rating for Egan's Pulitzer winning book personally. For a debut novel, I felt this book is well composed. I would recommend this book to people from Texas, Filipino and Mexican immigrants , and people who likes to travel through the book. I would look forward to reading Garza's next book.

An advanced copy of this audiobook was provided courtesy of NetGalley, Macmillan Audio and Henry Holt and Company. Thank you so much for giving me an opportunity to review this. Opinions expressed here is mine.

DNF.

I just could not get into the story. It moved incredibly slow and was boring enough I just didn't care about the characters enough to continue.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for an ARC of this audiobook.

I have very mixed feelings about this book. I found the writing and the narration by the multiple cast wonderful. At times, I found that the numerous characters got a little confusing, but the author did a great job developing each character and making each story engaging and interesting. It has been a week now since I listened to the book and I find myself still thinking about the main characters. Where I felt let down was when the hurricane hit.. The threat of the hurricane kept me wanting to read more to find out how all the characters fared. However, once the hurricane hit, it seemed like a real let down, rather than the climax of the story. All in all, I enjoyed getting to know the characters and would be interested in reading something else by this author.

The summer I turned pretty vibes friend edition! I genuinely loved this book. It really surprised me but I loved all of the characters and they had great character development. Would deff read more by this author

The Last Karankawas was an interesting debut that centered around the Mexican and Filipino residents of Galveston, Texas as Hurricane Ike loomed nearby. There were a handful of characters that we revisited, and I liked the slice of life chapters of each one. Though they were slightly interconnected with themes of cultural identity and faith running throughout, I also appreciated that each section could be read as its own individual story.

The narration was also well done, and I always like when there is a full cast. Sometimes it pulls me out of a story if, for instance, a young woman is narrating an old man character. No issues with that in this book!

Even with all the characters in the story, I found the book easy to follow. The writing was beautiful in its simplicity, and the writer did an excellent job of describing the region. I'm looking forward to whatever she writes next.

I LOVED the premise of this story and the many cultural references. Author Kimberly Garza has a way with words and crafting short stories that'll make you imagine you were there.

However; about 40% into the story I instantly shut down. As a teacher, the mention of Uvalde consistently is a no go for me. I had to DNF for my mental sake.

I would definitely recommend listening to this story as all narrators featured bring the story to life.

I am a huge fan of weather-disaster movies and books. The story has something to move towards, an underlying tension that moves beneath the daily lives of the characters. This book had the tension but the big crash of the hurricane doesn’t come. It feels like it’s mentioned in passing and then the characters’ ho-hum daily lives move on. I’m not sure how I felt about this book. There were so many characters but it wasn’t too difficult to keep them straight. I’m always happy to read books about Filipinos so that was a bonus. But the story itself seemed so drawn out and slow. Nothing really happens then the storm comes then nothing happens again. The characters were well developed and interesting. I just wasn’t interested in them. So because I continued to read/listen but didn’t get attached, I’ll leave the rating at 3 stars.

Audio was well done, no issues.

This was a beautiful slice of life of a complex and loving community in Galveston, TX. I loved the narration of this with the multiple voices, but I do think the timeline was very confusing. Overall I enjoyed it.

What a debut, I found the premise of the book so appealing and the description of Galveston, Texas reminiscent of Barbara Kingsolver’s writing where the landscapes were really brought to life.
The story it’s self at times was hard to keep track of for a short novel there are a lot of characters, I read one review that if you read it as if each chapter is a short story it will feel
more cohesive, so at about the 30 percent mark I took this into consideration and it did make a difference and the story felt more connected under this perspective. I think when your molding so many characters into a story like this you need to either tighten the editing and the length or cut some of them out and flesh out the others.
A great audio production that I felt did the story justice. I would love to read what else this author comes up with because the writing is thoughtful and whip smart.

Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for this ALC in exchange for an honest review.

This book comes out August 8.

2 stars

I really enjoyed the narration throughout the audio version, and I strongly recommend this format for prospective readers. In addition to being well executed, the narration helped me stay (closer to) on track with what I found to be a bit of a disjointed read overall.

As Yaa Gyasi is my favorite writer at this time and a mainstay in a number of courses I teach regularly, there's no chance of me NOT following through on a book compared to hers. I'm also arriving with a realistic awareness of my feelings about Gyasi compared to my likely interactions with literally any other work. For me, the comparison can only be made in the large cast of characters.

I struggled a lot with staying engaged and with following the central events and characters. Though it does certainly utilize a unique structure, this happened, unfortunately, at the expense of character connection and even attachment to final outcomes. I'm disappointed because I can see a lot of potential and intriguing conceptualization here, but the end result just fell unexpectedly flat for me.

Because of that aforementioned potential, I'm definitely interested in reading more from this author, but I hope I'll be able to connect more strongly with the characters and their results in future reads.