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The city of San Siroco is sinking, though just a few people know about it. Dr. Tamsin Rivers is one of those people. She has been conducting top-secret research on a new communication technology, and the powerful company funding it is keeping tabs on the dire measurements. What’s more concerning to Tamsin, however, is that she has been doing her own measurements — in her basement. Each day, she finds it is sinking much faster than the rest of the city. And it’s stretching — unaccountably getting bigger. One day, she finds a door in the wall that never existed before. She can’t open it, no matter what she tries. She becomes obsessed with the door and its uncanny properties and behavior.
Then one night, it opens, and a woman who looks exactly like her comes through. This … thing … doesn’t seem to know anything about itself, doesn’t know where it came from or what’s on the other side of the door. Tamsin runs it through all the tests she can come up with to determine if it’s human. And the double is perfectly happy to do whatever she asks. She’s agreeable, biddable and helpful, opposite of Tamsin’s selfish, egotistic, competitive nature.
Tamsin cannot understand what is going on; she continues to be completely obsessed with what is happening in her home. But then she starts forgetting things, losing parts of herself entirely. What is the double? What does she want, and what is she doing there? And what is on the other side of that door? Tamsin struggles to keep herself thinking clearly so she can get answers.
I picked up this book because I thought Caitlin Starling’s The Death of Jane Lawrence was incredibly gripping, clever and fascinating. What would Starling come up with this time? This novel is set in a modern world, without the gothic setting in the other book (I do favor gothic stories), and this was less ghost story than potentially horror. I just kept reading to see where the story was going, to see what Starling had up her sleeve — she could have gone any number of directions. I enjoyed Last to Leave the Room and how she crafted it, where it concluded, but I personally preferred the other book.
Rated: High. Profanity includes 16 uses of strong language, around 5 instances of moderate profanity, a few uses of mild language, and fewer than 10 instances of the name of Deity in vain. Some kissing and one scene in which two women kiss and go a bit further but then stop. Violence includes some fighting, a killing by hitting someone’s head repeatedly, a good amount of blood and gore, a character having unanesthetized “surgery” by another.
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*I received an ARC in exchange for my honest review.
