This book was very confusing. I could not figure out if we were in the future or the past. It is very slow. I didn't care for the characters. This was not a book I enjoyed. However, I am happen I was able to try something I normally would not choose.

The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton
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Outside of the island the world has been destroyed by fog. The island is home to a group of people who work to survive, including three scientists. When one scientist is found dead it triggers a countdown till the fog consumes the island. They must solve who murdered the scientist to survive.
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What I liked:
-I loved the audio! Not only was the narrator good but I’m not sure that I would have pronounced all the names right in my head. I listened at my usual 1.75 speed and it was awesome.
-This was an excellent mystery! Lots of people and puzzle pieces, especially with the memory loss. Everything was explained so well by the end.
-I was completely consumed by this story and several times found myself thinking about it when I wasn’t listening.
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4.5⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 I don’t want to say much more and risk giving away spoilers. This was my second Turton book, and one of the things I love about his books is that the stories are always complex and engage my brain in a way that popcorn thrillers don’t quite accomplish.

This book was a DNF for me. It's one of those multi-character dystopian books, and I just couldn't follow along.

Thanks for the opportunity to review this audiobook. Unfortunately I did not enjoy it as much as I hoped. While the premise and idea of the book were very fascinating and right in my "genre sweet-spot" it just did not do it for me.

My two main disappointments were:
1. The narrator. I did not care for his execution at all. His take on female voices was hard to listen to.
2. There were too many "main characters" that made it hard to track at times.

Both of those factors lead me to believe I would have enjoyed this book more if I had read it as opposed to listened to it.

Stuart Turton's The Last Murder at the End of the World mixes murder mystery with an end-of-the-world thriller, set on a remote island where survivors are facing both impending disaster and a spooky fog full of deadly creatures. The story starts strong with the island's eerie vibe and the looming threat of apocalypse, keeping readers hooked with suspense and unanswered questions as secrets about the island unravel.

But things shift gears when the focus turns to a murder investigation involving one of the island's scientists. Some readers might feel like the story loses steam here. The intricate details of the murder case, plus the flip-flopping between first and third-person perspectives, can leave readers feeling confused and disconnected. Despite its bold ideas and gripping start, the book struggles with pacing and overly complicated plot twists that might make it tough for some readers to stay engaged.

In the end, The Last Murder at the End of the World shows off Turton's imaginative storytelling, but it's probably best suited for fans of literary fiction mixed with speculative elements. If you dig deep mysteries, you might appreciate Turton's style, but if you prefer a simpler, more immersive read, you might find this one a bit of a challenge.

I am so unfortunately going to have to DNF this. I wasn't a fan of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, but this concept sounded more up my alley so I really wanted to give it a go. Unfortunately, it also did not work for me whatsoever, and for very similar reasons. The entire thing is just so convoluted and all over the place and confusing. There are too many characters and things we're supposed to be keeping track of and I just didn't find myself enjoying it whatsoever. The plot got ahead of itself I think and Turton just completely lost it by halfway through. I just couldn't bring myself to continue.

This also has the same narrator as 7 1/2 Deaths and I'm personally not a huge fan. I can't even pinpoint why, but it feels more like a uni lecture than a book for some reason.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tantor Audio for an advanced audio copy. All thoughts and opinions are, as always, my very own.

Y’all not to be biased, but I think the secret with Turton books is you gotta do the audio.

This isn’t just me shouting out the narrator with the best name of all time, but the fact these books make absolutely no sense. If you’re reading this with your eyeballs, you’re going to take the time to stop and think. You’re going to ponder. You’re going to try to figure it out. And it’s not that I think that’s a bad move with mysteries, I just think this has the ambiance of a story told around a campfire. It’s wild, it’s twisty, it’s fun! Let the story happen to you, and you enjoy it way more!

Evelyn Hardcastle is a knockout. Dark Water was good, but it veered out of “interesting and full of twists!” to just straight up confusing. This is for sure stronger than Dark Water, but not as strong as Hardcastle, which maybe at this point I just shouldn’t expect.

I really liked this. It was a good story, it kept me engaged, and I loved the unreliability of it. I did figure out the ending in advance, which is never great - I’m not particularly good at that, and I don’t often try to do it. Agatha Christie, he is not. But I do appreciate mysteries that aren’t so graphic and awful.

Thanks NetGalley and thanks Tantor for an advanced audio arc! Always a joy

Stuart Turton wrote such an interesting end of world mystery. We are thrown onto an island where 3 end of world survivors are elders to a group of villagers. We find out the villagers have been created by Nema and are monitored by AI ‘Abi’. As an impending fog moves to take over the island they must solve Nema’s murder to save themselves.
This book was such a fun concept and I really loved the world building but I struggled a bit with the audio. I think this one would have been a book I’d have preferred the physical copy just so I could follow along a bit better.

While I enjoyed this story, the narrator made it rather difficult to enjoy. I believe if the narrator was more enthusiastic, I feel I could have enjoyed this story better. I will be purchasing the hard copy of this book to read/finish as I feel I will enjoy it more.

I truly wanted to love this one. I have enjoyed previous works by this author and this release was highly anticipated. Parts of the story were enjoyable and the audio narration was well done. However, it was quite confusing and took quite some time to grasp what was going on. I also found the ending to be quite the let down. Overall this one will not stick with me.

The world was destroyed by a fog and now everyone lives on an island controlled by scientists. Everything is peaceful and everyone is content until one of the scientists is discovered to have been murdered. Everyone's memories of the night of the murder have been erased, so piecing together what happened proves to be difficult. As they uncover the clues to the murder, they also discover bigger truths about the island.

Thanks to NetGalley for the arc!
I tried several times to listen to this audiobook - the synopsis sounded great! This however did not catch my attention and I’m not sure how to describe it - maybe more sci-fi type genre than I expected? I just couldn’t get into it or follow, which is nothing against this book at all - just not my thing. I’m sure many others will love it!

TW for gaslighting.

I think I liked this book? I'm giving it 4 stars, so I must have. It gave me Douglas Adams vibes at times, the writing feeling witty and quick. There was another author mixed in there too, but I'm struggling to put my finger on it. I think it may be Aldous Huxley? It has a sort of Brave New World vibe at times, so that's what I'm going to go with.

Overall, I liked the characters in this book, I liked the writing, and I thought the plot was well thought out. there is something about it that wasn't totally satisfying to my brain, but that may just be I was pretty sure I knew who the killer was immediately. Toward the end, I thought we would get a wild twist, but it ended up being exactly what I thought it was. Finding the motivation for the killing was a little harder.

Overall a good book and a fun read, I'd recommend it to people who like stories like Dragonriders of Pern, Brave New World, and Douglas Adams.

90 years ago the world suffered a catastrophic event. Sinkholes appeared from nowhere and a fog began to blanket the Earth causing most of the population to perish. A small number of people were able to escape to an island where the fog surrounded but did not reach.

Run by the "Elders" - three people who were around when the world collapsed and now don't seem to age - the island operates like a machine. Everyone has something they contribute to the overall wellbeing of the people and the island. Although some, like Emory, would say that the villagers trust too much in the Elders. After all, her husband was one such casualty of the Elder's demanding experiments.

Plus, in order to keep the population under control, no one lives past sixty years old (barring of course the aforementioned Elders). So it is on the eve of her grandfather's death that Emory finds a revived sense of wariness where the Elders are concerned. Truthfully, she's always been curious and not one to let a question go unasked - even though she rarely gets a straight answer. This sense of curiosity has made Emory somewhat of an outlier within the village. No one wants to look too hard at their situation, they just want to continue living their lives.

So maybe it's fitting that when one of the Elders is discovered brutally murdered, Emory is the perfect one to lead the investigation. But she's on the clock as the surrounding fog is slowly starting to encroach upon the island.

This book took a bit for me to get into. To the point where I picked it up and started and just wasn't connecting with it so I put it down. When I started listening to the audiobook, that made it unfold better for me, and then once we get to a certain point, I'd say maybe about 15 to 20 percent into the story is when you realize that everything going on has more depth than people simply surviving and rebuilding after collapse of civilization.

Adding to all this is the fact that the story is told to us from the perspective of Abi. An omniscient presence who is able to speak into the villagers' minds and know their thoughts and whereabouts. This presence is always a little ominous. You don't know what Abi is and what her true function is within this society. Therefore, you don't know if you can fully trust her.

Trust is a big thing in this book. Not only trust, but the blind trust we often place upon people in positions of authority willing that they have our best interests at heart. This is not to be a scary allegory of trust and faith, but I think more of a don't be afraid to ask questions kind of thing. Don't be afraid to learn and be curious. Because it quickly becomes apparent that there are things the Elders have been keeping from the villagers.

I thought that Stuart Turton lead us on a wonderful unfolding of this society. Each chapter revealed another layer or another piece of the puzzle working toward putting together the big picture. I never felt like there were too many twists and turns, which to be honest there are a lot. Instead each turn leads nicely along to the next and the next in a way that makes sense. I was rapt by how everything was unfolding.

Now, I think this also sets a pretty high bar that's difficult to top. Meaning, the ending wasn't as revelatory as I was expecting. To be fair, though, I think this says a lot about it being more about the journey than the destination. It also doesn't negate the fact that the book kept me wanting to read on, wanting to find out what was happening next. I wanted to put the pieces together with Emory to see where it lead. Overall, it was very satisfying.

Speaking of the listening aspect of the book as mentioned above, I think an audiobook really works because it leans into the idea that we're being told this story (via Abi). The telling makes sense then if we are literally being read the story aloud. I think it's an interesting choice to have a male narrator essentially speaking for a female entity as Abi is referred to as she throughout the book. I don't think it takes anything away or adds anything, I simply think it's an interesting choice and makes me wonder about the process of choosing narrators for audiobooks. I do feel like there were times it was difficult to know which character was speaking. There was not enough distinction between the differing voices used for each character in some cases, but I'd say Emory is definitely the main protagonist of the book and she does stand out.

Overall, I know that Stuart Turton is known for the clever twists and turns in his stories. Reflecting on this one, I truly was surprised in quite a few places, but not only that, I'm left very curious about the world and left thinking on what the world was like. I appreciated that it's set in an unknown time so we have no idea what year the fog came and overtook everything in relation to our own real world which gives it a timelessness. As though this could all really happen at any moment. So again with that ominous feeling.

Any book that can make me continue to think about it for days going on weeks afterwards is a book worth spending time on.

4.5/5 stars
This author does weird thrilling unnerving stories so well. This is my second book of theirs I’ve read and truly enjoyed.
The narrator was wonderful.

"The Last Murder at the End of the World" is a dystopian murder mystery that I really enjoyed! There are many characters so it took some time to learn who everybody was. However, I couldn't put the book down once I did get into it. I'm usually not interested in dystopian sci-fi novels but I really was riveted by the story! I didn't love the audiobook reader though. I found his reading style to be very dry,

Thank you to the publisher for the digital audiobook in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you Tantor Audio and NetGalley for the ALC of the book.

A seemingly perfect island with 122 villagers and 3 scientists. Everyone has their own role on the island until one scientist was murdered and the security system malfunction can’t hold back the deadly fog for too long. The villagers have 92 hours to solve the murder or the fog will take over the island. There is only one problem - no one remembers what happened.

At the beginning of the book it felt that there were too many important characters and it took some time to figure out who is related to whom. I liked to discover more and more from that island life, about villagers and the past of the scientists. Stuart Turton ability to describe the nature and characters was amazing, his text was flowing like a melody.

I loved the narration of James Cameron Stewart and his portrayal of the characters and their emotions.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Tantor Audio for my copy of The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton narrated by James Cameron Stewart in exchange for an honest review. It published May 21, 2024.
First off the narration of this book was very well-done. I found the reading and cadence to be perfect for this book.
This book was so imaginative and had me thinking so much. It gave me serious The Giver vibes, and I really loved that. I found this book to be both so mysterious, and fascinating. I could not stop listening to it. I loved the was that the narrator was written, it was unique and added to my overall enjoyment of the book.

3.5 stars // A dystopian sci-fi take on a murder mystery. I enjoy Turton’s genre bending plots and always find them pretty interesting. I wasn’t as invested in this story as I’ve been on his other novels but it was still a fun read.

Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review

I always read Stuart Turton's books and can't help but wonder how his brain works. I don't understand how we comes up with these stories but they are definitely interesting. One thing that is also true is that, even though they are 500 page monstrosities, I am still left wanting more from the story. In Evelyn Hardcastle, I wanted more about the prison system. In the Devil and the Dark Water, I wanted more about the pirates and world beyond. In this one, I wanted more about the fog and the science behind it all. I was invested in the story and wanted to know who killed Nema but when certain things were revealed I just didn't seem to much about any of it anymore. Overall it was a good blending of genre's that does have something for everyone. For me, I was left wanting a whole lot more.