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claudiaslibrarycard 's review for:
Last Girl Breathing
by Court Stevens
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Last Girl Breathing got my attention because I adored Dress Codes for Small Towns by the same author, Court (Courtney) Stevens. Dress Codes for Small Towns is a moving, queer coming of age story about Billie and her group of friends in a small rural town with a conservative preacher as a father. Dress Codes encapsulates the uncertainty of exploring your gender and sexual identity in that kind of pressure cooker environment. So I went into this book with high expectations of good writing, deep characters, and space for queer identities beyond the binary.
NOPE. That's not what this book is. Honestly, the fact that both of these books are by the same author makes me furious. Last Girl Breathing is chock full of unnecessary gendering ("him and her self" when it would have been so easy to say "themselves"), frequent and extended Harry Potter references and romanticizing, and an inappropriate step sibling relationship. The characters and plot excludes any kind of diversity. And the story should have touched more on the role of class in rural towns impacted by millionaires, but that opportunity was completely ignored. Then add in that this book was painfully slow until the 70% mark and had little character development throughout, and I can no longer read from this author.
We deserve better from YA authors. This is NOT it.
NOPE. That's not what this book is. Honestly, the fact that both of these books are by the same author makes me furious. Last Girl Breathing is chock full of unnecessary gendering ("him and her self" when it would have been so easy to say "themselves"), frequent and extended Harry Potter references and romanticizing, and an inappropriate step sibling relationship. The characters and plot excludes any kind of diversity. And the story should have touched more on the role of class in rural towns impacted by millionaires, but that opportunity was completely ignored. Then add in that this book was painfully slow until the 70% mark and had little character development throughout, and I can no longer read from this author.
We deserve better from YA authors. This is NOT it.
Content Warnings
Minor: Incest