Strange Deaths of the Last Romantic wasn't for me personally, but I think it does have appeal to a specific audience.

The plot of this novel is a strong one. It intrigued me in the book description right at the start. The execution was not as strong. I felt that the writing does a ton of “telling” rather than “showing” and I started to get frustrated. It wasn’t super complex and I found I was skimming through sentences and paragraphs. I also found it weird that through the beginning of the book the main character was depicted as being 10 years old but fully spoke and acted like they were much MUCH younger. So that part was confusing to me. I didn’t love any of the characters, so I didn’t find myself fighting or rooting for anyone. All around, a strange book, but it had a great core and solid foundation.

If romance, action and a little bit of sci-fi is your thing, then this book is for you.
Adam (MC) has a mutation that allows him to disappear and come back to life in a different location, completely naked but always with his revolver in his hand.
The beginning of this book started off from different points of view and was transitioned together wonderfully. I loved the idea of this story and that a somewhat tragic romance was involved. However I wish this book were longer and by that I mean I wish the author would have went more in depth with the biology of the mutation.

If you're not into gruesome, disturbing scenes, then I would skip this book - as it has many dark moments.

There were also a lot of questions left unanswered in this! Like why Jon Smyth brought dogs to his missions that he left to die? Or why Adam always woke up with a revolver!

All in all, it was an easy read and the ending was satisfactory and didn't leave me frustrated. I just found myself wanting more from the book!

An interesting concept, but poorly executed. I really wanted to like this book, but from the very first page, the writing is clunky. There are some really serious passive voice and tense issues. I also thought the chapters jumped too quickly, especially in the beginning of the book. These were all craft issues that threw me out of the story. In addition, I don't think that the world was built very well in that I didn't believe what was happening at all.

Generally, I don't like to give bad reviews. But I'll admit, i didn't like this book. I didn't finish it either, perhaps I could have given it more of a chance but I found the main character really irritating.
Adam is a self-professed 'romantic' - supposedly, even at a young age he kept falling in love. I don't really buy the characterisation, it just read as self-obsessed, with an inflated sense of self importance. I mean, what 10-year-old reads poetry?
Maybe other readers will be able to look past it, but I tend not to like books with characters I can't get behind. Adam just seemed like a guy I really wouldn't like, he seems very elitist and stuck up.
The concept (a man who can't die, but is resurrected after each death remembering a little less of himself) was interesting, but the protagonist made it insufferable for me I'm afraid.

Dear Lord, this year is already off to a bad start if this is the kind of books I am going to be reading.
I hated this which is kind of strong for me to say but I can’t quite put into words how much this book just annoyed me.

- gaping (and I mean gaping to the point that it’s possible this is the size of the black hole) plot holes. what even was this plot?? who is she because she wasn’t written here.
- racist, cliche and utterly mind numbing characters. I actually couldn’t fathom some of the things I read. which brings me on to the writing - I can’t even talk about it. awful.
- the honest lack of care in this book is what is most disappointing. full of grammatical errors, weird phonetic spelling to depict people’s accents, random structure. just the whole thing was a mess.

I don’t want to hate on a book but this is possibly one of the worst books I have read and I won’t be getting those two hours back of my life.
I received this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Solid Four Stars

I was very late to this party with this imaginative story but the romantic in me loved it.
This is a genre-breaking book with elements of thriller, science fiction, New Adult, and even romance. Which may or may not be a good thing. A boy commits suicide, but does not die—he simply is transported to another location—sans clothing. He soon learns to use his ability to get out of difficult situations. Unfortunately, every time he does this, he loses some of his memories of his past. He names himself Aristotle and writes his own obituaries. Awesome concept, right? I at first could not wrap my head around this one but I managed to enjoy it. I also would love to be able to control my own fate like that.

As the story unfolds, he learns that he has a genetic abnormality that allows him to have this, an ability that some unscrupulous people—rich men who want their lineage to be perpetuated ad infinitum and scientists—want to harness his genetics.

Aristotle falls in love with Lilyanne who is a carrier of the same recessive genetic mutation. Aristotle dies one more time and loses Lilyanne. That was heart breaking and I almost stopped right there. My issue with this story is that suicide is romanticized and Aristotle is “addicted” to killing himself. He seems to have neither any particular emotional revulsion about repeatedly killing himself or significant psychological trauma from doing so. There are some sex scenes that really aren’t X-rated, but also aren’t in keeping with the rest of the story; they do, however, add to the New Adult genre.

Though there is a romance and Aristotle is billed as “the last romantic,” I didn’t find him particularly romantic. His idea of romance seems to be stuck in the early adolescent phase. I do like the come of age feel to it and will actually read more from this author in the future just to see what imaginative story comes next.

This is a very strange Sci-fi story but with and intriguing story line! It was a fast pace story line that reeled you in and keep you coming back for more. Adam or Aristotle as he is called both has a weird obsession with suicide and does not fear death from the get go. The reason is because he doesn't die, he just jumps into another life. This is becuase he has genetic code that gives him that ability. He changes his name back and forth so he can follow his previous life since when he wakes back up he can't remember his past. This story follows his life and jumps from one part of his life to the next. It really pulled me in when he finds his true love. There is so much going on including guys who are trying to get him to figure out his genetic make up. I really enjoyed this strange and unusual story and would recommend it to others.

This was an excellent book! With a riveting plot, and detailed - and realistic - character development, you will definitely enjoy reading this title!

This is a quirky story, to say the least. Adam accepts an extraordinary situation with a strange sense of calm, and becomes just a tad too eager to use his abilities to avoid trouble. Various elements of the danger he faces are woven together to make a suspenseful plot, and he experiences some touching moments.Yet I found the ending, though ambiguous in a way, to be somewhat disappointing. Don't confuse Adam's characterization as a "romantic" with the idea that this book is a romance.

I really wanted to like this book. I found it hard to relate to the characters and to follow the story. I only read half the book and did not finish.

I don’t really know what I read but I know my brain didn’t enjoy it.



Thank you to NetGalley for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

**2.5
I think this book started really strongly, but then it all kind of went down hill from there. I love the premise of this book, but I think the actual story was severely lacking.

I refuse to finish this book, but I’ll review it anyway, only to warn people not to read it. It’s terrible. I’ll start with the only good thing in this book, the very thing that made me choose it in NetGalley’s shelves: the initial idea of it. From the summary, it sounded like an interesting thriller with a boring heterosexual romance I could ignore, or even grow into liking a bit. A tiny little bit.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. First of all, Adam, the main character, is boring. So boring and dull it hurts: he isn’t funny, nor he is mysterious, nor caring and he does passes as sweet (or, at least, it’s what the author expects to portray), but in a way that’s just creepy.

Besides, I can’t help but add that the book and its protagonist are painfully sexist. I’m going to have a wild guess that the author is the same. I’ll try to list everything wrong that I’ve picked on this book within only 14% of it.

- The first moment where Adam claims he became a romantic was when he played a prank on Anna, one of his classmates, and he almost died. He hated her guts, but after that, she suddenly became beautiful in his eyes.
- We’ll still talk about poor Anna for a little while. The boys hate her, and they are disgustingly and excessively violent, to the point where Adam tells that, during her birthday party, there was piñata and their response was to pretend the piñata was Anna herself, and they beat it up. No, you’re not hearing it wrong. A bunch of fourth grade boys were in a party anf fantasizing about beating their classmate up, quite literally like a piñata.
- Then, as if just that wasn’t enough, the boys felt like playing a prank on Anna would be fun, so one of them suggests putting a dead bird next to her lunchbox, and Adam not only supports it, but suggests that they also paint the animal’s corpse with red paint they’d steal from the art teacher’s office! Poor Anna, who wasn’t paying attention at the time, took a bite of the bird, and started to choke. For a moment, I’d assumed he’d feel guilt when he said “I thought we–no, I– had killed her”, but then, he says “he saw the tragedy of his own existence” and that he “emerged out of the chaos a new creation, a new man”. Because of course, that situation was about him.
- It’s also worth saying that he kept describing the lunch lady as ‘large’ and talking about her performing the Heimlich maneuver on Anna as if it was some kind of sick joke. He’d almost killed his classmate, but the only time he refers to her as ‘poor Anna’ is when “in between abdominal thrusts, poor Anna struggled to break free from the large woman’s embrace”.
- Anna’s parents were absolutely okay with what happened! It’s actually written in the book that during the meeting, her father spent the entire time winking and smiling his way! And after that, he took Adam aside and told him that Anna “talked a lot about him at home”, and said the line that Adam described as “probably the best explanation of feminine psychology he had ever heard”, finding it “so simple, and yet so profound.”
- “If she hates you, she hates you for not loving her back.” That was it. He said it to the boy who’d just almost killed his daughter. It’s so disgusting, the implication that, when women say no, or show that they’re repelled, it’s because they’re playing hard to get or something amongst those lines. If someone seems to hate you, just leave them alone!
- And, unfortunately, this isn’t the last sexist line in the book. Soon after, out of Adam’s POV, which was a relief to me before I realised that the main character was different, but the author who was writing him remained, I found the lines: > “As for Lilyanne, she could never do anything wrong in her father’s eyes. From the first time he looked into her eyes, he knew he’d hold her tiny hands until she grew into adulthood while his own aged with wrinkles. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for his two girls. From cameras to tracking devices, from expensive security systems to thorough background checks on every babysitter, Mr. Beloshinski oversaw it all. Some perceived him as paranoid; he preferred to see himself as being intelligently cautious.”
> “…her husband refused to let her work”
> “she learned not to argue with her husband”
- Besides the several sexist parts and plot points, the characters felt inconsistent to me, such as Adam revealing that he’s finally realised life wasn’t fair after being beaten up by the man who adopted him, which would be fair if, before that, he hadn’t lost his mother, spent weeks in a coma, and almost killed Anna. I find this very enough for one to notice the unfairness of life. Adam’s also extremely cocky, acting like a child genius despite being one of the most boring characters I’ve ever seen, a creepy, sexist asshole who cannot deal with a ‘no’ as answer to save his life–not that saving his life is something he’d need, all things considered–and a bully. He’s immature as fuck a character who, as the writing style suggests, was supposed to be the nerdy one who reads a lot and has a higher level of comprehension than his peers.

In conclusion, this book has no redeeming qualities. The only thing that kept me going was this review, and not even that kept me going for long. I’m never even getting near anything by Moses Yuriyvich Mikheyev again, ever.

The concept of this book really drew me in, but I found myself getting caught on some of the prose. I also questioned how this author represented females in this novel. Yet, Adam as a character was interesting, and I still generally enjoyed this story.

This book blew me away! I was unable to but it down. Perfect, dazzlingly, very well written. The details the author described throughout the book was so amazing. The characters and storyline were fantastic. The ending I did not see coming Truly Amazing and appreciated the whole story. This is going to be a must read for many many readers. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! No spoilers. Beyond amazing I enjoyed this book so very much. The characters and storyline were fantastic. The ending I did not see coming Could not put down nor did I want to. Truly Amazing and appreciated the whole story. This is going to be a must read for many many readers. Maybe even a book club pick.

It was hard to start but so rewarding once I did. This is a thriller that's filled with romance and mystery. A really good read once you get into it. The cover is very intriguing too which is always a plus if you judge by that but yeah. Good read.

A promising idea, poorly executed. Every time you think the writer is going to get out of a particularly bad bit he adds something else, usually a subordinate clause, and it all goes down the pan.

Strange it is. This book doesn't fit any one genre. Modern Romeo and Juliet with a twist. Not sure about this book at all. I don't know how to describe it or how I feel about it.

Among the most flagrant writing choices in Strange Deaths of the Last Romantic:

• Enough plot holes to sink a luxury steamship and each and every one is plugged up with what I can only call neon play-doh.
• A male main character named adam who, for the brief period where he's ten years old, talks like a five-year-old despite the narrative treating him like a flawless, science-inclined genius
• Unwarranted—and totally unpredictable—shifts between third person and first person to make executing the already haphazard plot more convenient for the author. For most of the novel, adam's chapters are told in first person, but in the third act they suddenly switch to third for no discernible reason.
• Adam claims he's liked women all his life, with the exception of ten-year-old anna, who he and his fifth grade buddies hate with a violence so uncalled for, it will make your skin crawl: "As a joke, I told the boys to pretend it was anna we were swinging the bat at when beating the shit out of that piñata." they hate her enough to cover a dead bird in paint and plant it in her lunchbox. When she essentially passes out on the floor after almost eating it, foaming at the mouth, he suddenly decides she's the most beautiful girl ever and vows he'll never hate another one again. At a school meeting, she and her parents immediately forgive adam. Anna's father even pulls aside the boy who almost killed his daughter to let him know she's been mean to him all along not because he runs in a circle of bullies, but because she hates that he doesn't love her back. No other disciplinary action besides a one-week suspension is doled out. Adam's mother walks him from that meeting with, no, not a single chastising word, but offers to buy him toys. Thus, the "Romantic" is born.
• Far more in the way of sexism and misogyny. I am not exaggerating when I say every female character in this book exists to either be desired by or to submit to the men of this world. I have never seen such a blatant case of main character syndrome in a main character. Adam's world was constructed to bend to his whim. It's almost like I'm playing a video game while surrounded by npcs. At times this feels so meta that the novel almost reads more like satire than serious published fiction. The women of this world take care of drunkard fathers and their daughters, quit their jobs to assume domestic roles in order to make their husbands more comfortable and happy, endure violence and creepy advances they're trained to treat as romantic, or else needlessly die in what I can only call gory, gratuitous torture porn. It's shameless.

It saddens me to say there is nothing redeemable to be found in this book.