A review by aardwyrm
Last to Leave the Room by Caitlin Starling

dark mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Exactly what you expect from Starling, a severe, maladjusted lesbian getting scared and increasingly deranged for a few hundred pages. The parts that work are very good at being spooky. The story takes a long, long time to get engaging, and a lot of stuff doesn't go anywhere, not in an ambiguous horror kind of way but an oops forgot this thread kind of way. And the ending is kind of a whiff but really good endings are especially hard on this subgenre. There's a great book inside this pretty okay book but it needs a little excavation.