A review by heykellyjensen
The Last Bookstore On Earth by Lily Braun-Arnold

When the Storm hit, Liz holed up in the now-abandoned bookstore where she’d once worked. In it, she trades books for supplies, hoping to survive. It feels like the safest place to be when the world outside has become more than dangerous. In addition to trying to stay safe, Liz is mourning that her former coworker Eva has left her alone, which is just another loss in a long line of losses Liz has experienced…and has avoided acknowledging and mourning. 

But as a second Storm brews, a girl named Maeve barges into the bookstore hoping for safety. Immediately, she and Liz are at odds until they realize that each holds a special skill that can help them survive. Maeve is difficult, unfriendly, and, well, she barged into Liz’s space without asking and refuses to find her own shelter–or at least that’s the perspective we get from Liz. As readers, we pretty quickly see that Liz’s perspective might not be the truthful one but one marred in some of her own difficulties and sometimes-challenging and, well, unlikable characteristics. But then Liz realizes Maeve has some skills that make her stay appealing, namely that she might be able to help fix up the store and prepare it for whatever storm will come next. Liz says she can stay. 

Perhaps it’s the fact they’re potentially witnessing the end of the world and perhaps it’s the fact that opposites can attract and perhaps it’s the fact they are holed up in an abandoned bookstore together, but Liz and Maeve are weathering the storm together and growing closer and closer. 

But Liz’s inner demons are roaring and Maeve’s secrets are also showing up, all thanks to a trip the two of them make outside the bookstore in order to gather more supplies. Despite how many good feelings are growing between the girls, their potential relationship might be over before it begins. Can they set their pasts behind and hang on to one another through the rapidly devolving world around them…and potentially survive not only the storm but long enough to have a true, meaningful relationship? 

A sapphic dystopian climate change novel? This book had all of the fixings for one that I would like, and I really did. It’s a tightly-written "small" story in that there are few characters and the difficulties they encounter are both big–climate change–and small–when Maeve tells Liz they need to leave and Liz stays behind, is it because there is a real need to leave or is it because Liz herself is stubborn and difficult when she doesn’t get her way? Maybe it’s all of the above. There is a lot of loss in this book, and while it certainly approaches grief and mourning, at the center of this story is what it means to be a survivor and how being a survivor may fundamentally change who you are. Did you want to survive in the first place or would it have been better to be a victim to an unfriendly world?