Review: The Last One by Will Dean (Spoiler-Free)

I can have fun with stupid, but only if stupid's not boring.

I appreciate how little the synopsis gives away about this story, but had I known the direction it goes beforehand, I may have realized I wouldn't love it. I'll keep this review vague so as not to spoil though.

The first half of this book lands firmly in the thriller category, though because of the cookie cutter tell-don't-show characters, I didn't find it very thrilling. I enjoyed the shift towards horror in a later section, but that kind of became invalidated by the ending. The horror did keep me engaged though, because even though I didn't care about the characters, what they were going through was so extreme it kept me turning the pages.

I think part of why I found this so dull was because I rewatched Severance at the same time as reading it. That show is one of the best pieces of media ever created about characters needing to figure out where they've ended up, and this book... is not. Where Severance has layers, this book has a single plaster wall.

If you've read this book and enjoyed the main gimmick, check out some more recommendations on my Goodreads.