Published: August 19, 2025
Publisher: Orbit
Series: The Echo Archives #2
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 416 (Kindle)
My Rating: 4 Stars
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Synopsis:
The Last Soul Among Wolves is the brilliant second installment in Melissa Caruso’s Echo Archives series, a whip-smart adventure fantasy featuring cursed relics, sapphic romance, and a magical murder mystery.
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.
The Last Hour Among Worlds was a surprise favorite in 2024, so I was excited to see where Melissa Caruso would take readers in the next installment. Though vastly different in terms of plot and scale, The Last Soul Among Wolves still managed to capture my attention with a fantastic bit of mystery and plenty of deadly jumping between realms.
The story picks up several months after the dramatic year naming event that occurred in the previous book and poor Kembral Thorne is still sleep deprived and stressed, which I can relate to quite strongly right now! Jaycel Morningray shows up at Kembral’s doorstep begging her for assistance in a slight problem that she seems to have. Oh, and that problem involves three cursed Echo artifacts, several of Kembral’s other childhood friends, and their impending deaths thanks to said cursed artifacts. As if having a very needy baby isn’t enough trouble! Kembral of course sets off with Jaycel, after securing the babysitting services of one rather terrifying but highly reliable Echo dragon.
Kembral arrives at a seaside manor to find a rather odd reunion of childhood friends and a few unexpected newcomers also affected by the Lovegrace curse. You see, if you wrote your name in blood in this particular book artifact, and then survived the killing of all the other people who wrote their name in, you could get a wish granted. Now, Jaycel and the gang were just stupid kids when they did this, but there were adults who also wrote their names in the book with the intent to have this wish granted. People start dropping like flies, not only because of the curse but because of some enterprising person seeking to hasten things along. Kembral and Rika (who was hired to work on this as well) are trying to find a way to snatch the lamp artifact from whatever deep Echo it’s hiding in when it’s not being carried around by a giant wolf to harvest souls. Chaos ensues.
This was a very fun read that presented a whole new exciting mystery/situation for Kembral and Rika to puzzle their way through while also building on both their relationship and some of the events that occurred in the first book. Melissa Caruso is a talented storyteller and continues to write compelling tales of adventure, friendship, and mystery that I just can’t get enough of. I’ll be curious to see what stressful situation Caruso puts her characters in in the next installment of the Echo Archives.
Powder & Page 
I’m really enjoying this series and definitely looking forward to seeing what happens next
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