Melissa Caruso: "The Last Hour Between Worlds" (ARC Review)

Title: The Last Hour Between Worlds [on Amazon | on Goodreads]
Series: The Echo Archives (1st of 2 books)
Author: Melissa Caruso [Site | Goodreads]
Genres: Multiverse, Supernatural, Thriller/Mystery
Year: 2024
Age: 16+ (the characters are all adults, and the book is indeed marketed to adults, but it can be read by mature teens)
Stars: 4/5
Pros: Fresh take on the multiverse trope with strong world-building. Engaging characters. Honest motherhood-vs.-job perspective that still encourages women not to be reduced to the mother role.  The story leaves plenty of room for a new installment, but doesn't end up on a cliffhanger.
Cons:  Things only start to get exciting when the characters plunge deeper into the layers of reality. A couple of twists are easy to figure out in advance.
WARNING! Blood, body horror, stabbing, fire, bugs.
Will appeal to: Those who enjoy modern fantasy, (deadly) alternate realities/time loops, enemies-to-lovers romances that don't swallow the plot, and new moms being badass.

Blurb: Star investigator Kembral Thorne has a few hours away from her newborn, and she just wants to relax and enjoy the year-turning party. But when people start dropping dead, she’s got to get to work. Especially when she finds that mysterious forces are plunging the whole party down through layers of reality and into nightmare. Most people who fall this far never return. Luckily, Kem isn’t most people. But as cosmic powers align and the hour grows late, she’ll have to work with her awfully compelling nemesis, notorious cat burglar Rika Nonesuch, for a chance to save her city - though not her night off. (Amazon excerpt)

Review: First off...DISCLAIMER: I requested this title on NetGalley. Thanks to Little, Brown Book Group UK for providing a temporary ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.

STEPPING UP

I have to preface this review by saying I'm a huge fan of alternate realities and time loops, but I tend to like them more when they're encapsulated in a sci-fi or magical-realism context. I do read fantasy from time to time (low/contemporary/urban), but I have to be completely sold on the book's premise...which was the case with Caruso's take on multiverse, so I took a chance on it - and I'm so glad I did. Basically, the setting is a world similar to our own - albeit steeped in magic and giving off an early-20th-century vibe - except in this world twelve layers of reality exist: the root universe, or Prime, and its eleven Echoes, getting more and more grotesque and dangerous the farther you stray from their paradigm. While it took a bit for the story to get going (I understand that the world-building had to be established, and it makes sense that the main character would look for answers at the party before she faced the outdoors and their mind-bending horrors, but the first couple of Echoes were a tad lackluster), it ultimately found its footing and became exciting and addictive, piling up layers (ha!) of horror, mystery, action, romance, plus character development and more world-building. [...]

A WOMAN'S WORTH

The protagonist, Kembral, is a new mother who's trying to enjoy a few hours away from her daughter for the first time - the kid's father fled when he heard she was pregnant, so she's raising her daughter alone, and only managed to go to the party because her sister volunteered to babysit. While I'm not a parent, I appreciated the discourse about motherhood the author spun - the old dichotomy all women face when they have a baby, the conflict between wanting to stay at home and raise the kid versus wanting to go back to work (and maybe to a less demanding/dangerous job than the one they used to have, for that matter), the elation and exhaustion, the sense of inadequacy, the erasure of everything that makes you a woman as opposed to a mother. Suffice to say, Caruso is totally down-to-earth and honest about the issue, but she ends up taking a very healthy stance on it. I also appreciated how, in a world that doesn't have a specific temporal collocation, but as I said, gives off strong vintage vibes, gender and sexuality are a complete non-issue - there's evident romantic tension involving two women (at least one of which is bi, obviously), and even a non-binary side character, and no one bats an eye (not to mention, most women turn out to be badass with a sword in their hand).

IT'S NOT A BIG DEAL

I do have a couple of quibbles about the story (besides the slow start, that is). One is very much a matter of personal preference: while I enjoyed the peculiar F/F enemies-to-lovers second-chance romance a lot more than I thought I would, I have to say it suffers from the lack-of-communication syndrome that's very common in bookish relationships - despite the need for secrecy and the guild rivalry and whatnot, love interest Rika could have very well thrown Kembral a bone a bit earlier, instead of letting her think she had been led on when they first met; and the only reason for it not to happen is that, without their banter and slow coming-together, the book would be half the length it is 😂 (OK, I'm exaggerating, but still). The second, more robust complaint I have is that a couple of the twists are a bit obvious (but rest assured that there's plenty of them, so the story doesn't run out of steam because of that). On the whole though, I found TLHBW to be a very entertaining and creative spin on a classic trope, with a protagonist who's a breath of fresh air in many ways, and I'm looking forward to following Kembral's (and Rika's) new adventures next year.

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