4.75

I had read Melissa Caruso's debut The Tethered Mage a while back and I remember thinking it was just fine, but I love the idea of multiverses and I saw sapphic pining and wanted to give her another shot and wow was this a case of right book right time for me. Kembral Thorne is a new mother and leaving her daughter alone for the first time when she goes to a party. Unfortunately for her, guests start dying and then the whole house is forced to the first echo and then the night repeats with slight variations and then it happens again and again, with each new echo getting creepier and creepier. I went in with middling expectations, knowing I hadn't been blown away by her debut and because Groundhog Day-esque stories can be hit or miss and I struggle sometimes with books that center motherhood. While I did sometimes struggle with just how often Kem started going down tangents about her daughter, a lot of the comments were related to how tired she was and I too am just so tired. I also think that the way the echoes changed events and the snippets of worldbuilding lore that we get through each echo made the repetition of the same few hours feel less redundant than they might have otherwise. There were a few instances where it seemed to slow the plot down, but overall I was intrigued from page one and I am interested to see where Caruso takes the story next. I also really liked the tension between Kem and Rika and the way they were reevaluating their history through the course of events here. This was snarky and weird and oh so much fun. I also really enjoyed the narration by the ever talented Moira Quirk.

This book didn’t do it for me!

I received the audiobook on NetGalley and decided not to finish.

The book is extremely repetitive and slow, I understand that the situation that is going on is going through layers of echos and finding a solution with clues found on each layers but this could’ve been condensed!
I managed to get around 30% and I’m just dreading having to go through 9h of the same environment.
The story itself is compelling but I’m not interesting in trading my time to know how it ends.
I wasn’t bothered by the new mom talk (I’m not a parent)
No issues with the narration and pacing

***2.0 Stars***

Overall,
I really wanted to like this book but I do not think I am the audience for it. A ground hogs day of magical mishaps set in a single location ended up being a bit boring for me.

I didn’t totally know what to expect going into this, but the premise and it's execution were so much fun!

Kem might just be a new favorite character, the way she was written + Moira Quirk's excellent narration really worked for me! I don’t think I’ve read a book about a new mom where the focus isn’t on the baby at all. Her daughter is safe at home and she thinks about her a lot but she isn’t the thing taking up all of Kem’s focus right now. Also, the impact of the pregnancy on Kem's body and mind were explored in a satisfying way, it wasn't just a backstory thing it was baked into who Kem is as a person.

The world was awesome, it’s a very fun take on parallel dimensions and I’m very excited to know that there will be a sequel!

Engaging, hilarious and had me flipping through the pages at a maddening pace.
Getting to know Kem on her journey to solve this a case that has world changing consequences if she doesn’t solve it. Thrown in her will they won’t they romance with Rika was a treat especially when they banter back and forth working through their difficult past. This book was a pleasant surprise of a book.
The narrator, Moira Quirk, was absolute perfection to this glorious book.
Thank you NetGalley for this Audio edition of this book, for we’ve grateful.

On maternity leave from her job as an investigator, Kembral takes a brief break from her newborn to attend a New Year’s Eve party. Things quickly go awry when Kembral realizes that she and everyone else in at the party are trapped in an Echo game - where the deadly, magical creatures who live alongside their world are setting the rules. Kembral will have to use her skills as a Hound to find a way out and team up with a once-friend turned nemesis—the burglar, Rika Nonesuch—to find a way to save them all.
❤️ What I loved: Great characters and a unique world made this book a lot of fun. Reading this felt a little like a video game in the best way - with each descent into the Echos, Kembral faced new challenges. I appreciated Kembral’s development as a character throughout the novel as well, seeing her regain her sense of self as a new mom. The romance side-plot was also a welcome addition to the main storyline, and the supporting cast of characters at the party added good color throughout the story.

💔 What I didn’t love: The story stood well on its own, but I found myself wanting more world-building, as the world had so many interesting elements. I hope we get more in book 2!

I had a great time listening to The Last Hour Between Worlds, and highly recommend it to those looking for a unique, adult fantasy read!

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 (4-4.5)

Acknowledgments & Disclaimers ✨ Thank you to NetGalley, Melissa Caruso, and Hachette Audio, for providing an ARC and the opportunity to share an honest review of this book. ✨ All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own. ✨ My reviews and ratings strive to evaluate books within their own age-demographic and genre.

Thank you NetGalley and Hachette Audio for the ARC

A fascinating and intriguing murder mystery with a sci-fi twist. I found the characters fleshed out and described well. I enjoyed the tension and the romance but wasn't always invested in the story. I liked what happened while it happened, but I could easily put the book down. Still I liked the story,

It took a bit before I understood around the magic in this world, but once I did, I was became very invested in the story. If you liked The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, then you will enjoy this one. They had similar vibes. 4/5 stars.

The fantasy novel “The Last Hour Between Worlds” by Melissa Caruso follows Kembral Thorne, a so-called hound who is forced to save her reality on her first night out at a lavish party during her maternity leave.

As the party Kembral attends turns deadly a mysterious clock starts chiming and transports her to an Echo reality. Thanks to her job she is trained in navigating these differing realities but she quickly is confronted with overwhelming powers that threaten not only her reality but her own life.

The concept of layered echo realities really drew me to this book. I wanted to see what would change and what would stay the same. The grandiose ball as the location of this variant of a time loop was a brilliant idea in my opinion! At first it was really exciting but as the hours went by it became rather repetitive and drawn out. I liked the mystery around the ancient clock and the sapphic romance but my favorite part was the descriptive writing style that anchored certain pictures in my head even months after reading it.

Overall I feel really torn about the book. I enjoyed the concept, writing and characters but the repetition and pacing bored me in the second half and nearly made me give up on the book. I would not continue in the series but I can see this book being read as a standalone novel and would recommend giving it a try.

A big thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Hachette Audio and Orbit for giving me the opportunity to listen to an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

Main character Kembrel is a hound, someone who goes between "echos" or alternate realities, of which there are 12 layers, to rescue people. Her rival/crush is a cat, and they wind up racing save the world in 12 different versions of a new year's eve party gone horribly wrong. Because gods are having a contest, obviously.

So this book had a solid start, and seemed super interesting, but it got very repetitive as we went into each echo, repeating various things over and over again in an attempt to save the world.

Also, there was a lot, like A LOT, of chatter about Kembrel's post baby body and exhaustion, which didn't add much of anything to the story but just kept being repeated.

Solid concept, but we needed more world building to make this make sense.

I appreciate the ARC, and the narration was great.

I thought this was very good and I will have to add this to the shop shelves. Thank you for the chance for us to review.

I would like to thank Melissa Caruso , The Little Brown Book Group UK and NetGalley for providing me with a reading copy and audiobook file of ' The last Hour Between Worlds' to read and listen to in exchange for an unbiased review .
It was the cover that initially attracted me to this novel . The eye-catching contrast of the black and gold colouring and the bold imagery.

The novel follows the story of its main character ' Kembral Throne' who takes a night away from her newborn to attend a lavish party. Within hours guests around her start to die from what she believes to be a poisoning leaving her in the wake of the tragedy. As a central clock tolls , her surroundings change and she is taken back in time to moments before the incident . Although she knows things are far from right as she notices small changes . Her trained eye knowing that she has fallen between a crack in the layer.

In order to immerse myself into this fantasy world , I played the audiobook and read along with it . I always find that this adds depth for me.
I loved the narrator and thought that ' Moira Quirk ' was such a suitable choice to portray the book .

The premise and concept fascinated me and I began my journey into it with such excitement. Unfortunately it began to fall short for me and with a heavy heart I had to stop reading at around the 21 percent mark. I wanted to love this book, I wanted to love everything about it , but for me it began to get very repetitive and I felt the continuation of it would become more of a chore than enjoyment. I always believe that life is too short to carry on reading books that you cant relate to. I just couldn't get invested which is a shame. I am sure many other readers will devour this book and love every page , but it just wasn't for me.
Although this is the case I would still like to thank all involved for giving me the opportunity to read the publication.

#TheLastHourBetweenWorlds #NetGalley

I'm so disappointed in this. I could not get into it and I desperately wanted to after that blurb. Unfortunately it's just not for me. I may try the print version at some point but I felt no connection with the audiobook.

Not what I was expecting and utterly loved every moment of it. The narrator did a great job and I think helped immensely in providing a great atmosphere and more character for the different voices. Highly recommend this audiobook. I also love the fact that the main character is unconventional in a way that she is a new mum and it is shown as a positive aspect to her persona.

Kembral Thorne is a hound (a investigator who sniffs out trouble) taking a few hours away from her newborn when the party she is attending starts dropping through the Echo layers that get more and more unhinged from reality. She's working together with the Cat (burgler) Rika Nonesuch who previously betrayed her when Kembral though they were having a lovely moment.

I won't lie, the world building on this one really confused me a number of times. Normally if I start getting confused, I let the book play through if the core story is interesting enough. Eventually everything starts making sense. This was not the case with Last Hour. I really struggled to follow the world and the way the world worked. The fact that as the story continued, it intentionally got more confused (by nature of the locations being twisted versions of the real world, continuously warping and becoming convoluted) made it a little hard to follow with my foggy mind.

I will say I loved the characters, which is what kept me reading even after realizing I didn't understand the world. The relationships between each other, and the way there was a lovely collection of different realistic characters. I loved how real everyone felt, how humorous some of the interactions and understanding they each had with each other.

I may just read any possible new books in this series. This was fun enough for sure. Definitely a book that if its someone's favorite, I would totally understand.

*4.25 stars*

This was such a fun fantasy mystery. I haven’t seen as many reviews for this so I went in with pretty low expectations and was pleasantly surprised.

The world was very interesting and the romance was cute. If you’re going into it hoping for very detailed world building however you’re going to be disappointed. I was left with a lot of questions about how the world works that I hope will be answered in the next book but the world was built up enough and with such amazing imagery that it didn’t impeded my enjoyment of the story. I also love to see older MCs in fantasy.

Moira Quirk is my favorite narrator and she did an amazing job with this! I really think her narration adds to the story.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ALC of this work. All opinions in this review are my own.

𝑩𝒐𝒐𝒌 𝒊𝒏 𝑬𝒎𝒐𝒋𝒊𝒔:🕰️⚔️🥂🍼🩸

𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒊𝒔 𝒊𝒕: An adventure fantasy with locked room mystery vibes and a badass sleep deprived mum as the MC.

𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝒄𝒂𝒏 𝒆𝒙𝒑𝒆𝒄𝒕:
🕰️Time Loops
⚔️Increasingly disturbing alternate realities
🕰️Saphic Pining/ Rivals to Lovers
⚔️Ball Gowns and Sword Fights
🕰️Deadly Games, Murder & Mystery
⚔️A strong, relatable FMC

𝑹𝒆𝒗𝒊𝒆𝒘: The Last Hour Between Worlds was an interesting and engaging blend of fantasy, mystery and murder with some futuristic elements and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. What made this refreshing and unique, especially within the fantasy genre, was the fact that the protagonist, Kembral Thorne, was not only older than the norm (ie not still in their late teens/early twenties😂) but she’s also a successful single mum to a newborn battling all the emotions and challenges that come with this.

When I read this book my daughter had just turned 1 and i’d recently returned to work. A lot of the time, i’d be reading it while she was breastfeeding or napping and it was fabulous to read a realistic and relatable exploration of maternal themes including breastfeeding, lack of sleep, mum guilt, conflict over going back to work and the physical and mental changes a new mum experiences.

While these themes are a big part of the book, this book is enjoyable as a fantasy mystery and I don’t think readers need to have experienced motherhood to be excited by the narrative and the world. I also liked the characters, the twists and the rivals to lovers romance that was woven throughout.

I thought the narrator was good and really added to my enjoyment of the book 🥰

I wanted to love this so much but I struggled to get through it unfortunately. It just was not my cup of tea- which is AOK. The characters just did not seem very deep or interesting to me personally. However, the world building was interesting and well done. I probably would have enjoyed it more if I'd read it in ebook form instead of listening to it.

This book came onto my radar during to my book of the month predictions and stayed on my radar because it’s so hard to summarize. I feel like I read the summary seven times and still didn’t really understand what the book was about, so I was nervous that I might not understand the story. Luckily, that was not the case.

This is a wild ride of a story that follows Kembral, a recent mother who has yet to decide if she wants to come back to work. She’s at a party when things start to go sideways and she finds herself in an alternate world with only her enemy, notorious burglar, Rika to rely on. This had sort of an acid trip mixed with fantasy vibe that kept me interested.

The audiobook of this was narrated well as well. I felt like the pacing was good and the acid trip fantasy vibe found its way into the narration too.

All in all, I enjoyed my time with this book. I see that it’s the first in a series, so I would consider reading the next one.

Loved this book and have already recommended this to lots of friends!

The characters are amazing and this book was a great introduction to the budding and established relationships as well as the world. I am excited to read the next book.

I listened to the audiobook version of this and loved it, the narrator really brought it to life.