The disorganized time jumping in the early part of this book was an issue for me. After three attempts, I gave up on the book. Please note, I only post 3 star or higher reviews to my sites, as that is what my readers want to hear about. Strongly recommend resolving the organizational issues before this book goes live. Best of luck!

An interesting premise with close proximity tension and spine tingling moments but one that, sadly, suffered from major pacing issues.

Disappointment is my middle name.

Imagine debuting with the incredibly unsettling and page-turning The Luminous Dead, following it up with The Death of Jane Lawrence, a story with so much meat and riveting moments ... only to think you can get away with this absolute snooze. Like I said: DISAPPOINTMENT.

For a horror thrilling, it was not thrilling at all. Nothing happens! It starts off right away with so much science and technical jargon that you aren't given the chance to parse it out unless you too have a PhD (and I have a Geography degree, I know what subsidence is here), and it bogs down the rest of the story. The emergence of a door in your weirdly stretching basement through which a doppelganger of yourself steps through should be terrifying, and it simply wasn't executed well.

There were a few scenes that were horrifying and promised a sudden turning point in the story, but they never lasted. It also doesn't help that it got quite confusing inside the main character's head. It seemed to switch POV's at times, but not really, and after reading the last page I am still not sure what exactly happened or which of the two Tamsins I'm dealing with. There *is* an answer for what caused the subsidence and the doppelgangers, but I think I need someone to explain it to me because I'm lost.

Will I keep reading Starling's work? Absolutely. I'm choosing to believe that this was just a blip and not the right book for me. Others will probably enjoy this but it didn't work for me.

An intense science based horror/drama, The Last to Leave the Room touches on so many things, doppelgängers, cosmic interaction, parallel worlds, greed, science advances and experimentation, and it does so with well written, thoroughly researched information.
We come in on Dr. Tamsin Rivers, and the current communications project her team is working on with the backing of Myrica Dynamics. We get to know her handler, Mx. Woodfield, a lurking presence in the background. The things Dr. Rivers and team are working on will be ground breaking, and historically shattering, but all factors haven't been taken into account. The sinking in her basement, and the mysterious door that appears, add to the concerns and mysteries.
The book was intense, not so packed with advanced terminology that I felt like I couldn't follow along, and was honestly just a lot of fun. I highly recommend it!

I Dnf'd this book around the 20% mark after restarting it and reaching the same 20% mark - I just had little to no desire to continue the story? I found the writing a bit choppy and it overwhelmed me to the point that I wasn't interested in continuing the story because I was too worried about the "he said, then she said, then he said" of it all. Additionally, I just wish I could have been inside the head of our FMC, Tamsin. Having the phantom narrator instead of this story being a first person POV didn't make much sense to me? maybe if there were dedicated POV switches that could have intrigued me a bit more? I generally give DNF's a 1 star but I bumped it up to 2 because of how neat I think the premise of the book is.

There are horror books that are slow to build tension, and then there are horror books that are slow...for no discernible reason. The creepy premise of Caitlin Starling's new book promises creeping techno horror for an age of looming climate disasters, but fails to deliver much of a thrill. It is a deeply psychological novel, concerned with the decaying mental state of our protagonist, which is fun from a horror of the mind perspective but didn't leave me feeling any chills. I wish the story had moved faster, and given more context to the "science" fiction of the universe.

I'd like to thank the author, NetGalley, and the publisher for allowing me a chance at reading this.

I made it to 70% before I had to close the book. This was one of those, did it really need to be this long types.

There are earthquakes (?) in this city that is causing a lot of issues. This scientist starts working on the source or cause. One night, a door appears in her workspace basement. After a few days, it opens and out comes a replica of her. Curious and infantile at first, it begins to gain knowledge and becomes a kinder, nicer replica of her.

So little was happening in this book that I just chose not to sit around waiting for something to happen. The build up was getting too long and wordy to make any sort of punch.

When I saw that Caitlin Starling had a new book out it was an auto-request ARC for me because I’d enjoyed “The Death of Jane Lawrence” so much. “The Last to Leave the Room” is a very different sort of book but not in a bad way, just different.

It’s billed as speculative horror but I saw it more as a psychological thriller with speculative elements. Brilliant, unlikable, ambitious scientist Tamsin Rivers is working on a communications project that requires the use of labs deep underground while the city around them may or may not be sinking, and it may or may not be related to Dr. Rivers’s efforts.

One day a mysterious door appears in her basement at her private residence, along with her doppelgänger, who has an infinitely more pliable personality than the rigid Dr. Rivers. Dr. Rivers descends into obsession studying the unusual phenomena.

This project is never actually really explained, which I found kind of frustrating, and the science is kind of iffy; this is one of those kinds of books that throws around scientific jargon and the scientific method but sounded more like someone doing their research.

The book is very slow paced and dragged quite a bit in the first 40%, but I stuck with it because I liked the dread it managed to build regardless, and it had the same moody atmospheric style as the author’s previous work. I also loved the characters. I suspect this book may have been written in the pandemic because it definitely dug deep into the paranoia and discomfort of isolating at home in a visceral way.

This was a fascinating character study of the transformational arc of an interesting character, Dr. Rivers. I also loved Lachlan, her handler at the company they both work for, and how it’s never explained that she’s nonbinary but it’s shown in her leather gloves, the way she dresses and her use of Mx. as an honorific. I loved the sapphic hate pining between the two of them.

The spookiness in the setting was definitely more along the lines of Black Mirror or Twilight Zone creepiness than scary horror but I like that kind of horror/thriller vibe.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Dr. Tamsin Rivers is the head researcher for a tech company that's been hired by the city of San Siroco to solve its problem with a slow but steady sinking of its infrastructure. Mysteriously, Rivers' basement is showing an even more accelerated rate of sinking. Even more mysteriously, one day a door that can't open and shouldn't exist appears in her basement. Even more mysteriously still, one night an exact double for Rivers shows up in the basement - exact in appearance, but more docile and less knowing in personality. But as Rivers spends more time examining and becoming more familiar with the doppelganger while simultaneously trying to solve the subsidence issues of the city, she begins to lose herself. Now she's in a race to discover how all the strange occurrences are related, and how to stop the dangers they entail before it's too late.
I must say, this is one of the most unique stories I've ever read. While it took a bit to get into the novel, as a lot wasn't explained at the beginning, as the book went along everything eventually made a lot more sense and was (mostly) explained satisfactorily. This was definitely a different take on the double trope, and an engrossing sci-fi tale. 4.5/5*

I really wanted to like this book. I really enjoyed The Death of Jane Lawrence, however, this was a DNF for me at 30%. The writing is beautiful, but the vibe of this story just isn't for me. I may revisit it later on. Just because it wasn't for me, doesn't mean it won't be for you!

No two Caitlin Starling books are the same, save for their intelligence, imagination, and compulsive readability. But with THE LAST TO LEAVE THE ROOM, Starling has outdone herself. If, by the end of Chapter 3, you're not *desperate* to know what happens next, you're as baffling as non-Euclidean geometry.

Not as good as Jane Lawrence. I got a little bored and distracted halfway through and feel like I actually missed the point of the whole story. But it was interesting.

3 stars

While I love a good slow burn, this one felt a little too slow. That being said, the story was very good, and the characters were well developed. It was able to build the dread, and anxiety quite well. I wish there was a bit more going on to pick up the pace, but other than that, it was quite a great book. I highly recommend pushing through.

Caitlin Starling has written another wonderful, suspenseful, slow-burn story that leaves you guessing until the very end.

I enjoyed every minute of this book. The characters are engaging and maddening - in all the right ways. Its heart wrenching as their mistakes lead to anguish and dispair but uplifting as they work through their redemption.

I highly recommend this thriller!

Thanks so much to NetGalley for the ARC. I picked this book because it sounded different from everything else and it was. This was claustrophobic and terrifying and completely original. It was great horror in that it reflected and twisted many parts of the broader culture. Dr. Rivers is on one level an example of a striving coastal capitalist. She has no empathy or friends, and becomes a victim of her own striving. And we have to live in her head and body as she is broken down (parts of that are excruciating). I won't get into what all happens, but quantum entanglement and trauma bonds begin to look like the same thing (yup that's right). A cautionary tale of fear and arrogance and one of rebirth as well. Loved it.

LAST TO LEAVE THE ROOM is the story of a generally unlikeable person whose life is utterly upended when the anomaly she's been tracking for her work begins to have strange and personal consequences.

The narrative stays focused on Tamsin. She’s a very focused scientist with relationship-savvy and political awareness as it relates to the flow of power, but she seems not to appreciate or care about the emotional toll of her plans on the people around her. She’s very calculating, as shown in an incident early on where she maneuver someone else into a position of blame after making it seem like a positive thing for them to attempt. Because her personality changes so much over the course of the story, her starting point has to be shown in swift, bold strokes, getting at the essence of her very quickly so that a point of comparison can be established. Moreso than even her research team, her most meaningful interactions are with Lachlan, who is somewhere between a minder and an enforcer. Lachlan's background stays pretty mysterious, with Tamsin, wary of her due to her position of power and her force of personality, Lackland has technologically enmeshed her and Tamsin's life in a way that’s skirting the edge of what can be excused based on their positions in the company. Especially early on, there’s an uncertainty over what Lachlan might do if she’s displeased, with Tamsin ranging between specific concerns about being fired and a general unease because she can't predict what the consequences might be.

One of the first signs of Tamsin's memory loss, at least the first one that I noticed called out in the text, was about an incident that happened before the book began, which put me in the strange position of not quite being able to confirm whether the memory loss is real. Gradually, however, the discrepancies and lapses in memory become decidedly less subtle as Tamsin deteriorates.

I've loved Starling's previous work, and this swiftly drew me in, holding me to the very end. Beginning with the section, "Nought", the story takes a turn from merely excellent to brilliant. As much as I was fascinated by the beginning, the ending blew me away. I love books that deal with memory distortions, or changes in personality, things that mean that someone who is nominally the same character becomes a very different person throughout a story or a series. It touches on dynamics related to ableism in the context of physical disabilities and brain damage, as well as whether memory is essential to personality.

Graphic/Explicit CW for panic attacks/disorders, memory loss/dementia, gaslighting, abandonment, confinement, emotional abuse, physical abuse, blood, gore, injury detail, medical content, medical trauma, torture, murder, death

Moderate CW for ableism, sexual content, kidnapping, mental illness, cursing, bullying, violence, alcohol.

Minor CW for vomit, suicide, animal death.

I loved this reality bending book!

I just reviewed Last to Leave the Room by Caitlin Starling. #LasttoLeavetheRoom #NetGalley

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an arc in exchange for my honest opinion.

Now, it is no secret that I love Caitlin Starling and her writing. Her last book "The Death of Jane Lawrence" is one of my favorite books and "Young Jessamine" is another favorite. Starling does really well at building up tension and creating tone. In "Last to Leave the Room", these talents are definitely present. We follow Dr. Tamsin Rivers as she heads a research team to investigate why the city of San Siroco is sinking. As she continues research, she discovers an inexplicable door in her basement. All her attempts to open the door fail and just as she hits her limit, the door opens and out walks her doppelganger. Curious as ever, Tamsin begins to run tests on her doppelganger, but the longer the doppelganger is around, the more Tamsin begins to forget things and it's not long before she finds herself scared of the outside world. Before things go completely awry, Tamsin must race to figure out just what's going on in San Siroco.

As much as I love Starling's writing, I did have a rough time starting this one. It started out really slow but the slowness did help to create context for Tamsin and what her research is. It also gave Starling opportunities to start building up the tension. When Prime shows up, it gets really claustrophobic which is surprising because all of the moments of Tamsin deep underground were already claustrophobic. I'm not a very scientific thinker (if you know me, you know this is true) but I love Science Fiction and this was no exception. I am not sure how realistic the science in this is but god was it fun to read. I loved learning about the distorted sinking and reading about Tamsin's team trying to figure out the readings against the reality of what they were witnessing.

I really enjoyed this even though I was kind of scratching my head at some parts because I wasn't really sure where Starling was taking this story. She's done a great job of creating a work that is speculative sci-fi without it being pretentious or boring. And she does a lot of with messing with the reader's ideas of what's going to happen. If you already enjoy Starling's writing, you'll enjoy this one. If you've never read Starling, you may be a bit confused but I think you'll have fun reading this one.

Dr. Tamsin Rivers is head of a research team whose goal is to discover why the city of San Siroco is seemingly sinking. At home, her basement is impossibly expanding and a door appears that was not there before. When her perfect duplicate walks through the door, Dr. Rivers finds herself unraveling.

I spent a good 10% of this book pretty confused at some of the science fiction explained in the exposition. I’m still pretty curious at what the “nodes” were and how to picture them in my mind. The pacing in this book was good, I felt myself excited to find out how everything was going to resolve. The PCR scene with DNA electrophoresis was pretty accurate. Though I can’t say anything about the accuracy of the theoretical physics. I appreciated the mounting dread with respect to space stretching impossibly, the atmosphere added a lot to the story. I related to the scientific process of the main character, I’d want to work through the impossible with evidence! I love her character development as the story progresses. I love science fiction horror and this one nailed it. This book gave me vibes reminiscent of Black Mirror. If you like science fiction horror, definitely consider picking this one up!

There's a distortion in Dr River's basement. Then a strange door appears. Stranger still, is what comes through that door.

A sci-fi thriller that bends space and logic.