Early Review – The Last Soul Among Wolves (The Echo Archives, Book 2) by Melissa Caruso (4/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 393 pages
Publisher: Orbit
Release Date: August 19, 2025
ASIN: B0DPFM47KX
Stand Alone or Series: 2nd book in The Echo Archives
Source: eGalley from NetGalley for review
Rating: 4/5 stars
“All Kembral Thorne wants is to finish her maternity leave in peace. But when her best friend asks for help, she can’t say no, even if it means a visit to a run-down mansion on an isolated island for a will reading. She arrives to find an unexpected reunion of her childhood friends—plus her once-rival, now-girlfriend Rika Nonesuch, there on a mysterious job. Then the will is read, and everything goes sideways.
Eight potential heirs, half of them Kem’s oldest friends.
Three cursed relics.
The rules: one by one, the heirs will die.
The prize for the lone survivor: A wish. And wishes are always bad business.
To save their friends, Kem and Rika must race against the clock and descend into other realities once more. But the mansion is full of old secrets and new schemes, and soon the game becomes far more dangerous—and more personal—than they could have imagined.”
Series Info/Source: This is the 2nd book in the Echo Archives. I got a copy of this on ebook from NetGalley for review.
Thoughts: I liked this book a lot but not quite as much as the first book in this series. This is still very readable and entertaining. I love the idea of the echo worlds, however because they had been introduced in the first book they weren’t quite as exciting in this book.
Kembral has named this the Year of Hope, then she gets called by an old childhood friend for help. Long ago, a number of Kembral’s childhood friends signed a book in blood only to find out they had been cursed. Kembral must figure out the curse in order to stop her friends from dying one by one. Imagine Kembral’s surprise when she finds that one of her friends hired the famous Rika Nonesuch to help.
I continue to enjoy that Kembral is a new mother and balancing having a newborn with her other responsibilities. This was dealt with really well early on in the story, however as the pace picked up we stop hearing about Kembral’s baby. Kembral has a convenient babysitter who can just hang out with Emmie while Kembral is embroiled in this mystery, and that felt like a bit of a cop-out but I understand why it was handled that way.
This mystery gets fairly complex and ties in with the Empyreans. It was intriguing to learn more about the Empyreans and how they remain balanced and stable.
This was easy to read, and I still really enjoy Kembral and Rika as characters. We get to learn a lot more about Rika’s past and her mother in this book. I did think some of the other characters could have been better developed; it was a bit hard to keep them straight, especially at the beginning.
I enjoyed the action and mystery here; I also continue to really enjoy the idea of the echoes and a Prime reality. I didn’t find the idea of the echoes as exciting as last time, mostly because this time around the idea wasn’t new to me. However, we also don’t get to travel through the echoes as much in this book.
My Summary (4/5): Overall I enjoyed this and look forward to the next book in this series. I really liked Kembral and Rika as characters, but felt like the other characters were underdeveloped and hard to keep track of. I also still enjoyed the fast pace and the traveling through echoes, although we get less of that in this book. There is a well-done mystery here, I really enjoy the world, and this was very fast-paced and easy to read.
