Interesting premise, but distracting narration

I kept waiting for this book to grow on me, in part because it has elements I love: social critique masquerading as a murder mystery, a slow opening up of a new world, fun sci fi. The Last Murder at the End of the World never quite captured me, though. The novel, a locked-room mystery that takes place on an island surrounded by killer fog, is narrated by an AI named Abi who operates as a kind of moral compass for the residents of the island; she can talk to them, hear their thoughts, and in some instances control their bodies. Though I’ve enjoyed AI narrators before—Neal Shusterman’s Thunderhead is a great example—Abi ultimately felt like a distraction, and sometimes a (literal) deus ex machina. The narration unfolds from the perspective of a few main characters, usually in limited third person, and I often found myself forgetting about Abi until there was a sudden shift to the first-person “I.” It was strange to read a mystery told by a narrator who knows all the secrets but doesn’t care about the players—at least, not beyond their usefulness in achieving a particular result. Ultimately, I didn’t connect enough with the characters to feel invested in their success, and I found the mystery itself too reliant on trickery and Abi’s interference to be satisfying in itself.