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 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.

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 doesn’t 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.

He eventually learns that he has a genetic abnormality that allows him to to 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.

Suicide is romanticized and Aristotle is “addicted” to killing himself and 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.

Strange. This novel is…strange.
With an unusual plot and genre-bending acrobatics, ‘Strange Deaths of the Last Romantic’ is thrilling, romantic, strange, and DARK.
While the title implores readers to expect strange, I was pleasantly surprised by just how original subject, fascinating characters, and twist plot all combined to create a unforgettable reading experience.
Novels like this one deserve to be explored because they deviate from the #’s of publishing trends and it instead projects the flair and depth of fine, intriguing literature.

i found the writing style confusing,,,, i got 1/2 through the book and could not finish i found the idea to interesting but the plot jumped around too much for me i may go back sometime and finish but had to put it down for now

Strange Deaths of the Last Romantic has a stunningly original storyline, and I will definitely be keeping an eye out for more brilliance from this author in the future. The plot was gripping, especially in the second half, and I never could predict what was coming next. Rather than flowing smoothly from scene to scene, the writing jumped around—though I liked that this disjointed confusion mirrored the main character's fascinating situation (and kept me on my toes). I enjoyed the poetry embedded throughout the work, though I didn't always agree with the author's representation of romance. I absolutely loved the ending; kudos to the author for creating such a wondrous story that successfully haunts the reader's consciousness after the last page!

I found the Strange Death of the Last Romantic very strange and unique. It had a touch of multiple genres a little suspense, a little science fiction and a little romance. It kinda gave me the vibe of a science fiction version of Romeo and Juliet. I was very interested right from the start. Adam’s story was quite interesting. Thank you net galley for my arc,

Well...strange would probably be in every descriptive phrase used to review this book....but, that's not always a bad thing. After all, the title warns us to look for strange. The story line is unique, so unique it really does not fit any genre label. It definitely has elements of scifi, romance, fiction, a little thriller and probably lots more that you might see that I didn't list. But, again, it was definitely not a bad thing.

The story of Adam/ Aristotle and Lilyanne follows no clearly defined romantic path. Adam "returns" from death each time so has no fear of dying. He has an unhealthy fascination with suicide as a means of leaping from one life to the next. He cannot predict where he will be when he "returns" so changes his name to Aristotle. Why? Because then he can google himself and find out what happened in his prior life, since he loses that part of his memory with the leap. Still with me? Now the path twists...
Adam "returns" because he has a genetic code that gives him that ability. He meets a girl, Lilyanne, who has the same code and they fall in love. But remember, when they leap, they do not know where they will land so must search for each other each time. In the interest of keeping this strange, Adam and Lilyanne have a group of rich men looking for them also. They want to figure out how to keep from dying.

So, yes, this is strange. But it is also totally different from anything you may have read before. It may not be the next classic in the making but it was definitely worth the reading time to see where the story would take me next. If you need something different...and strange... to read, you have found it!

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
#StrangeDeathsOfTheLastRomantic
#StrangeDeaths
#MosesYuriyvichMikheyev

Pulled me in right away. So easy to read. Simple writing (a good thing), simple concepts (also a good thing) and a few poems (of course this is about a romantic).

Almost like four stories in one. Adams early life before his first death (not a spoiler, um, the title). His college years. His life after his great love. And the epilogue. Together these stories put together make a lovely book. It crosses genres. As the author himself says in his notes at the books end "I have a tendency to write the unexpected, the peculiar, the strange."

I would definitely recommend this book to others. I will definitely be in search of other books by this author. If you love books of all sorts of genres and you can handle a little romance, take a look at this one. You won't regret it.

Thanks to #NetGalley and the author himself (I believe he self published this book, I only just discovered) for a free copy of this book to review. As always, all thoughts are my own.