The Last Migration by Charlotte McConaghy

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I was excited to read this, it had great reviews and has been picked up for filming – the blurb made it sound like a gripping read in a future where climate change has taken over, with a strong female lead and eccentric characters – how could you go wrong?
It was possibly one of the most boring books I’ve read in a long time. I found nothing about this story gripping, I knew the “shock” ending by at least half way through and the main character was just un-likable.
The writing style was not one that I enjoy reading, it was as though the author wanted Franny to have a mystical quality that was really profound despite the fact that she wasn’t mystical, and is in fact annoying and has mental health issues that are brushed over because she’s so unearthy in her ways.
Two main threads of the story are based around people loving her and as I can’t find the appeal in her character, the plot didn’t flow for me.
I found the secondary characters not well fleshed out and their entire backstory told as one long paragraph rather than through snippets of them as people. Which I think is really what I felt was the trouble – I was being told and not shown a lot of this story.
There was too much backstory, too much jumping back and forth in timelines.
I can see how it would make a great drama series, because there was a lot of potential that was unexplored but I found it didn’t really work as a novel.



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