Reviews with content warning for Death - The Last Girls Standing

The Last Girls Standing pays homage to Friday the 13th and the extreme climate change movement in this slasher thriller.

While it's an odd combination, this book mainly focuses on Sloan, who lost her memory of that awful day and her girlfriend and fellow massacre survivor, Cherry, as Sloan attempts to remember what happened through hypnosis.

As the story goes on, the plot twists so slightly that you will feel like you are starting to question what is happening with the character's motives and what actually happened during the massacre.

This is a very thrilling and compelling read, the ending is rushed, confusing, and abrupt but leaves an opening for a sequel.

Content Warnings

hobbithopeful's review against another edition

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challenging emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Thank you Penguin for this ARC
A sapphic horror novel that depicts trauma in one of the worst lights I've ever seen in a book, with a depressing end message.
Sloan and Cherry are the lone survivors of a summer camp massacre. Deeply traumatized they find solace in each other, but Sloan has holes in her memories, and begins to question what really happened.
I honestly have no idea what I just read. And not in a "wow that was so fantastic and different, but in a I had no idea where any of this story was going".
I do think the premise is interesting, as well as the writing. Just like Sloan, I felt completely lost and unsure of who to trust. There are a lot of great tense moments, and so much gaslighting. I was ready to point fingers at literally everyone in this book.
I don't know Dugan's background, I don't know if she has experienced trauma and CPTSD such as Sloan has. I'm not sure if writing this in a way was cathartic for her. For me someone who suffers from CPTSD, I found this book to be an inaccurate and quite frankly offensive depiction of trauma. There is so much wrong in how this book depicts what it is like to go through trauma therapy, and how the characters react to trauma.

The end message of the story seems to be one of "you'll never recover from your trauma and instead spiral and continue hurting others". So that was great to read. Sloan just ends up cracking and killing Cherry, to what end? To show that we can't heal? To show that we will continue hurting others?

I do think the ambiguous ending hurt the book, and just further leaned into the "you won't heal from trauma" stereotype.
If you decide to read this, please check your triggers/content warnings.
Personally I didn't have a good time reading this, and wouldn't personally recommend it.

Content Warnings

herohail's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Content Warnings

avidreaderandgeekgirl's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

The two survivors of a sleep-away camp mass killing are now in a romantic relationship. One with no memories of what happened. As she tries to unravel what happened that night, she gets deeper into a possible conspiracy going back to her birth family.
Wow! It was a twisty book! It was also a very dark and emotional book. I didn't really like the ending, and in the end, we didn't get a lot of answers. It was an okay book.

Content Warnings

paperwitches's review against another edition

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dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.75

{↪NO SPOILER}

☾Trigger Warnings☽
Violence, child death, mild lesbophobia and biphobia, mental illness, murder, psychosis, PTSD, toxic relationship, stalking, cursing, gaslighting.

↪Story Synopsis: After surviving a massacre at a summer camp with her now girlfriend Cherry, Sloan must learn who to trust in the aftermath.

↪Rating: 1.75 rounded to 2

★★☆☆☆

↪TLDR; I normally love final girl tropes, but this just wasn’t it. Go watch Friday the 13th instead.

↪Length: 320 pages

↪Review:

First off, my thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the complimentary advanced reader copy per my request. This review is being voluntarily given and contains my honest thoughts and opinions.

I really, truly, wanted to like this. I almost DNF'd it four separate times, but I truly thought the ending and the explanation would justify the struggle it took to read this. Not only was I horribly wrong, but it did feel like it robbed me of a lot of time that could’ve been used for the rest of my TBR simply because it was so long and repetitive. And I have a strong suspicion, it’ll make a lot of other readers feel similarly.

The marketing for this seems to say this would be a slasher, it was not - to start with, the story happens AFTER the murders at the camp - like a year afterwards.
I have no idea why some reviewers are insisting this was a slasher, I’m sorry - they’re lying to you. The only dose of slasher you get is through Sloan’s memories. And Sloane lost almost ALL her memories of that night, so there’s your answer. This is strictly a thriller, and most of the elements it promises you - it does not deliver. It’s unreliable, it’s horrifically underwhelming - and it’s not what I felt promised.

Don’t let this make you think that this book does not have good parts to it though,
The author’s writing style often pushed me through parts I otherwise wanted to abandon. There were true compelling aspects that were fun, but all that ‘fun’ is deleted after you find out it was just the novel wasting your time. There are too many unanswered subplots, like what were the details of Sloane's biological parents? Where did Connor go when he acted so highkey in love with her? Why did Kevin like Nirvana that much? Why was his wife a die hard Christian that hated ‘It Smells Like Teen Spirit’? Why does she hate Allison (her mom) so much when she’s a great mom? The catalyst for all these subplots, and even the murders, are never answered. You hardly even know the other victims names, and all but Kevin, are mentioned once and then forgotten. Like what about the shy boy obsessed with cryptids? He seemed 100 times more interesting than Sloane OR Cherry. Too bad though, you never hear about him again. It’s so frustrating, and it’s not even the most frustrating part of this story.

Onto the most frustrating part: Sloan. I hated her character with an icy passion. She is definitely a caricature of Gen Z (I’m a Gen Z’er dont come for me). She is not only unreliable as a narrator but as a person. She steals money often from her little brother’s piggy bank. She claims to love him (and the book really pushes this but - and I quote - ‘half the time she forgot she even had a brother.’You also don’t even see him until like 50-something percent within the book. She thinks her generation invented the grunge obsession of Nirvana for some reason, and then calls another character old for actually LIVING through that initial era. Sloan ignores her ex bestfriend Connor for a year. Then wastes Connor’s time using him as her personal Uber driver, then blowing up on him for giving her what she wanted. I almost DNF’d at 46% for the first time, because after being driven by Connor she ‘collapses’ and ‘needs’ cherry immediately. (By the way can I add this man drove 90 minutes for her little side quest she came up with at 3am, WITH THESE GAS PRICES?!) She then proceeds to let Cherry treat Connor like trash and deny him access to Sloan and Sloan’s own house. It infuriated me so much I dropped the book for a week, hence why I missed release day.

She lets Cherry often openly disrespect her mother. Sloan is an incredibly selfish character, so selfish in fact that not until after 70% does she realize Cherry is actually a human that isn’t some impenetrable robot that went unaffected by what happened. Poor Cherry was left shouldering all her own demons, and all of Sloans’ as well. Additionally, I don’t know why Beth got so much hate, she does the best she can. With a patient who has no want to help herself - maybe this comes from my own personal experience with therapy, but it’s simply not realistic to blame Beth like she wasn’t trying so hard with Sloan for a year. It should’ve been Sloan’s mothers responsibility to take her to an actual therapist - not Beth’s fault.

On to the part that will trigger most reader’s, there is an extremely toxic codependent relationship between Cherry and Sloan. Sloan is very hard to accompany as a narrator. All the relationships between the characters are shallow, but Sloan’s relationship with Cherry is particularly so. We see no deep level of understanding between them, no miraculous sympathetic interactions. But we are told repeatedly that no one else can understand them the way they understand each other. You’ll just have to take the author's word for it, because there’s no other proof besides bland repetitive scenes of them waking up half clothed or Sloan being comforted after yet another breakdown. Their main method of bonding is ‘taking notes,’ where they print out headlines and newspaper articles about the murders and paste them on their wall. After a while, especially with the ending, you feel like this novel is just making a spectacle of mental health. Instead of appreciating her descent into madness, you’re annoyed and even bored by it. Now, despite the fact I HATED Sloan for her codependency, it felt like a realistic representation of it and it was all cheapened by a bad ending that uses mental health as a cop out of ending a story properly.

Over time, the tension and paranoia you feel about Cherry and her mother begins to fade with every time Sloane magically forgets her distrust because Cherry happened to smile at her. And despite this always dragging the story 10 steps back, the romance isn’t even an important part of the story. The truth of the matter is this book could’ve been slashed in half (pun intended). It was way too long and full of repetitive questions and conversations between Sloan and Cherry. The most heart wrenching part is I had every reason to love this story. It had so much potential but it just couldn’t help but get lost in its own purpose. Sloan is often puzzled by how she survived, and you know what girlypop? Idk either.

Overall, I did not find this book disturbing, only infuriating. The author's ability to keep you reading, and highly invested in answers for the questions the character poses is commendable. The ending surprised me, if only because it was batshit crazy. You will get no pay off or revelation, only more questions once you close this book. It would have benefited from a less rushed ending, more flashbacks, and more exposition - and maybe a lot LESS of Sloan x Cherry. I recognize that this was the author’s first thriller, so I am hoping the next one heeds the criticism given here.

↪Bookish Pros:

👻This is very fun if you aren’t too invested in it
👻Great writing and prose, with just enough wit
👻A fun cult that loves rabbits because they’re cute and kinda emo

↪Bookish Cons:

👻The Journey is dubious, and the destination is worse
👻Takes a long time to get through because the pacing is on and off.
👻The main character you will absolutely despise
👻Many of the characters are shallow, and even more disappear randomly.
👻The story often drags so much it’ll take you longer than usual to read despite it being only a little over 300 pages.
👻The ending is rushed, convoluted, and horribly written. It read more like a comedy and completely ruined the tone the book had been building successfully for the first time in that entire chapter

↪I’d Recommend To:

If you are a fan of slasher and horror, this isn’t for you. This is for girls who are new to horror and thrillers, like completely new - and don’t mind some codependency. I feel you cannot even, in good faith, show this to teens simply because of the toxicity between them - which sucks for LGBTQ+ teens out there who love horror and want to see themselves represented. It just sets toxic boundaries and expectations that can be confused under the soulmate trope.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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