A review by girgir81
The Last Thing to Burn by Will Dean

2.0

I really thought I was going to like this… I really wanted to like it… but I didn’t. 

 

I will make this quick, brief and spoiler-free.

 

This story had a lot of promise. The blurb was really intriguing and full of mystery – it made me save this book for a special occasion and what better occasion than the first book of 2024! 

 

Long story short… the book felt so repetitive I had to check a few times if I was reading the same chapter over and over again by mistake or if the printers had messed up the binding… it was around 200 pages long but felt like 700 – took me a whole week to finish! 

 

About 95% of the book was the same thing over and over again with an infant added to the mix halfway through – the same thoughts, sentences, plot, actions, lack of character depth and/or growth. The “action” started towards the last 5% of the book and it was very anticlimactic and felt rushed. It was so slow and then so rushed that the big reveal didn’t feel like a reveal anymore – I had long lost interest in the story and just wanted it to end…

 

After finishing the book, I went back to GR to check the ratings and some other reviews and discovered that I wasn’t alone in feeling this way. In my opinion, this doesn’t even qualify as a thriller. So many missed opportunities. So many questions. So many things that didn’t feel believable. 

 

I did discover what the last thing to burn was though so at least I have that as a takeaway...