It was a nice story, but I felt like the characters and the romance were not flushed out enough. It was a short book, so there is definitely room for more development. It has the potential to be a great sci fi book!

“I know I have no choice. I know this is my life. But this life is a lie.”

I’m disappointed. That’s probably how I can best summarizes me feelings about The Last Girl on Earth. I thought the premise had so much promise - Li as the lone human on Earth and her personal and emotional struggle, plus I was excited to learn more about the alien race that had taken over Earth and what lead to the alien apocalypse. Unfortunately, I felt like the story glossed over everything. The story seemed to read as more of a fleshed out outline than an actual novel. The worldbuilding was done so hastily and the character introductions only briefly mentioned, I never felt like I knew what was going on. I did really love the found family aspect that Li has with her adoptive dad and sister. It was so genuine and actually impacted me emotionally. Unfortunately, the other relationships felt rushed and underdeveloped. A sad miss.

I received a copy of the book from Delacorte Press via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All quotes are taken from an uncorrected proof.

It's a good story if you military-last-human-on-earth stories. Me? I thought it would be less military like then it actually was

It's a good story if you military-last-human-on-earth stories. Me? I thought it would be less military like then it actually was

I just want to say that i fell in love with Ryn. This story amazed me and i couldn't help ,but picture it as a film in my mind. Thank you for creating such a beautiful book and sharing it with us readers.

I really enjoyed this book (story). I wish it were longer though. To me: We are so focused and driven to create our own individualism and self-awareness in the world that we've become so unaware of the damage we've already done to our own planet. Instead of jobs that improve and benefit individuality we should have jobs that improve and benefit our planet!!!! But in agreeing with both sides, we could find a middle ground. And somehow acknowledge the damage we've done to the planet, as a whole, along the way! What a few generations might call sacrifice, humanity would call salvation. Not to mention your sweet little love story along the way.

The Last Girl on Earth is a young adult dystopian science fiction story centered on Li, the only human left on an Earth overtaken by an alien race. She's been adopted by an alien family, disguised as one of them, and raised as one of them. Her life is at a point right now where she has to enter their society and serve her time as one of them as an officer. Through her training, she meets and falls in instalove with one of them. I had a really hard time connecting with Li and believing that she was in fact a human living among aliens. She came across way too strongly as a lovesick teenager. I wanted to know more about the alien race itself. What lead to them coming to Earth and destroying the humans? What are their special abilities? Why do they go to all these planets? How can they love if they don't feel with human hearts? Did Li really not think she was going to become a part of the race that destroyed human life? Way too many unanswered questions for me.

This is one of those cases where the premise of the book sounded amazing but the story wasn't. Sci-fi is not the genre I usually reach for, but I've been interestedin some books lately and really enjoyed them, so I decided to give it a chance since the premise captivated me.

My main problem with this book is that I didn't get anything from reading it. I didn't really care about the characters, the story was so flat and tropey, and everything happened really fast because of the length of the novel. I get to give it that it was a super fast read, but it didn't push me to want to read it. 

The characters were like any other character that you find in a YA novel, which didn't help the story at all. I was expecting more unique characters, mostly because they were all aliens, minus our protagonist Li, but they were like any other teenager that appears in a book. And I was quite disappointed by that because I thought I would learn more about their culture, or their history, and that was non-existent throughout the story (minus a few lines where the author is telling us something about other planets). 

Also it was purely focused on the romance. Usually I don't mind romance in a fantasy or a sci-fi story, but in this case it was a bit too much, and it wasn't needed in the book. Everything was done super fast, it appeared to be insta love-ish as well, and that only distanced me from them much more 'til the point I didn't care what happened to them. 

Another thing I noticed was that the characters were underdeveloped. Despite everything that was going on in the book, they were the same at the beginning and at the end, which didn't make a lot of sense, since they were going through a lot of "tough" things. Overall, they were really flat and plain. 

It was a super fast paced story, and I read in in about two or three hours, but because it was a standalone, there were some things left unanswered regarding the world and the characters. Some of them were ended so quickly I was a bit confused, and others were left out completely. 

And there's the ending. I hoped to like it more, because usually some stories tend to get better as they reach the end, but that wasn't the case of this particular one. It came out of nowhere, and it didn't really make any sense because of the path the story was taking. It was really convenient.

I’m kind of at a loss with this one, I feel like it had a lot of potential but it never really delivered.

The romance was sweet and the idea itself was great, but right near the end it started getting way too cliché and rushed to the point that it seemed as though I started reading a completely different book or rather one that had a page limit and realized it needed to hurry up and make things happen in order to get our characters from point a to point b without really working out the logistics of those actions.

I have no problem with shorter books but you have to set up a narrative that flows as one consistent story that doesn’t break the established rules of the society you created in order to give the characters a way out, the entire time we watch how this group works in a militarized type fashion in order to deal with outside population and to have an ending like that seems sloppy, and yes I know this is a sci fi novel but again given the constructs set up in the book itself that final go was so unrealistic or at least not as optimistic and heartwarming as I’m sure it was trying to make itself seem, there were just way too many plot holes.


**thank you to netgalley for providing an arc in exchange for a fair and honest review**

This started off as a really fun read, but it turned about 90% through into something else.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Li is raised to be better than human to hide herself amongst the aliens. Some things really bothered me about this book. Here are a few: That she could kill a "superior being" almost easily, that she thought she could dispose of the body by throwing it in a lake and having it go away. After being grilled about these situations she turns and hide tail instead of telling her father and getting help. That the simulations were so easy after being hyped up. That she had to worry about exertion but the other "aliens" in her group were out of breath also.

There are also a lot of unanswered questions like did they find the other humans?

I really had a good time reading this until the very end. Like Lost, it was like they had a great idea and then didn't know what to do with it so they gave it an almost poor one.

I received this copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book, viewed in a vacuum, is mediocre and non-remarkable.

Viewed in comparison to the potential hinted at by its cover and premise, <i>The Last Girl on Earth</i> is IRRITATING and an offensive waste of space.

Issues that should have been explored a whole lot more or AT ALL:

• The GENOCIDE and the human scientific experimentation that is just brought up like twice. This, paired with what seems to be the essentially authoritarian and repressive nature of the Abdoloreans' way of life, is deeply interesting and needed a lot more page space.

• The dynamic between Li and her sister was explored a little, but come on. Her sister, a perfectly legitimate Abdolorean, has had to live the life of a secretive outcast freak with Li because she's human. I want more about their bond, and their relationship with each other, and their relationship with their father.

• It seems like the Abdoloreans teach that humanity was essentially evil and unworthy of survival for living the way they did. I need to see more about how this topic is treated within Li's household, how she thinks about her heritage, and most of all: WHY? When they were going on a field trip about the ridiculous evil of how humanity lived by FARMING COWS and CULTIVATING THE LAND of all things, Li was like "well maybe they were just ignorant - they didn't know how to live in harmony with the planet like we do." I, for one, would like to know just how the Abdoloreans live in harmony with the planet, if cultivating the land and having livestock is a horrendous degradation. What do they do? We know they eat fruit, but what else? Do they not need protein? Does Li need to eat a special diet or take supplements? How can they just drop this wacky statement and not explain how the Abdoloreans are different?

• Li's physical training. The Abdoloreans, apparently, are super strong, super fast, breathe underwater, are super agile, and don't get hurt by hardly anything. Li's dad has been secretly training her since she was a kid so that she can fit in to this world. But... we don't... see that except for like 2 little flashback scenes. Li is competing in a MILITARY TRYOUT trying to place as NUMBER ONE and there isn't any clear inequality between her and anyone else. She seems to be on an equal plane, even though we only see her do a secret training session once in like... three weeks... and the only other references to training are from the long-ago past. Is intensive training in childhood just... enough... to give Li permanent muscles and fitness?

With the level of commitment to physical things that's shown in the book, it seems like Li should be at the bottom of the barrel of her classmates, but instead she excels constantly among people who should 1) just naturally be at a higher level than her and 2) also be ACTIVELY TRAINING for this MILITARY COMPETITION. It just seems very unrealistic that Li is doing what seems to be about the same/less than everyone else, and is always in first place. Honestly Li should be doing a secret routine every single night and morning.

• Li's father. This guy must be a truly radical revolutionary. In a place where even Ryn casually criticizing the idea of universal military conscription is considered mildly dangerous and unusual, this guy SAVED A HUMAN CHILD from state-mandated genocide and secretly raised her as his own. He must have deep, serious issues with his own government that go way, way beyond just this. This kind of treason isn't just a random, one-time thing, so why does he come up only like four times, and half of those are just telling Li off for some minor infraction of the house rules? Who is this guy? What is his job, and why does he just seem content to act mild-mannered and do it, after such rebellion? His relationship with Li must be unusual, given that he cared about her enough to save her from certain death and adopt her, and compromise his entire family's safety for her, and spend her entire childhood fitting her to survive. So why does he coME UP ONLY LIKE FOUR TIMES?

• Li's loneliness. She's grown up completely isolated except for her sister, practically, having to keep her distance from everyone else. This, by itself, would create a lonely psychology of living in Rapunzel's tower and looking out at everyone else, but also being the last of her species on the planet? Why do I come away feeling none of the loneliness/confusion/longing that Li must feel?


Issues that were explored WAY TOO MUCH:

• The cute romance. Literally from page one, Li's eyes sparkle with infatuation as she sets eyes on the cute new boy. Just copy and paste that to fill the rest of the pages, and you have the general idea of what <i>The Last Girl on Earth</i> is like. The cute romance is quite frankly the entirety of the plot.

The plot sounds amazing and it is, for the most part.

When I first read the description of this book, I wanted to have it right away and I'm happy I got to read it pretty soon after requesting it, the thing is, the more I read, the more I realized, it was not what I was expecting.

Okay so like the description says Li is "the last girl on Earth" the invasion finally happened and another race took over Earth eliminating us because we are the weaker race. Dandy, loved the concept, it could have gone so many different ways, but it went to, Li pretending to be one of them.

Nothing wrong with it that can also lead to so many different awesome outcomes and in many ways it did. But in so many other ways it was just the same as any other dystopian story were we get conquered by a more intelligent race. I mean the concept is wonderful, the girl that tries harder than anybody to fit in because her life literally depends on it, and then romance and betrayal happen and then the cliffhanger outcome. But it just was a little too predictable for my liking.

The reasons why this story didn't live up to my expectations are simple, I felt like there were some plot holes that made some parts of the story a little confusing. And then as much as I love romance, there are very specific times that I'm actually okay with, the very first guy the main lady meets or lays eyes on, is the guy she is going to end up with. I'm not crazy about the whole, "I just laid eyes on you and from now on you are the only thing I will think and worry about for the rest of this story" kind of thing. I just don't necessarily hate it, but for some stupid reason it really bothered me in this book.

It felt like there were so many things Li had to worry about and the presence of a guy becoming so important to her that she is willing to break the rules the moment he invites her and her sister to go somewhere, just doesn't sit well with me.

Her best friend had asked her for years and she always refused because of the rules he father set from the very moment he rescued her, but then comes this random guy and she is willing to do it, because she wants to start living. I just couldn't really deal with that.

I do have to say this book had so much potential. There were so many outcomes, but like about halfway through the book I could already tell how it was going to end and once I got to the end I was kind of disappointed that I was right.

I'm not gonna give you spoilers or anything, because even though I didn't like it that much, it is still a good read.

All in all, I know it sounds like I truly didn't enjoy the story, but I did. I read it in like two days and there were parts that I really enjoyed, like when Li went swimming with the gang for the first time and she almost drowned. And when they all had to go through the battle simulations. The details of the simulations were so vivid that I could feel myself like actually there. That was pretty awesome.

I'm trying to give you my honest opinion about this book and even though I didn't love it, I know there are people that are going to love it, because it is a good concept and a good story. Just like I wasn't a fan of Divergent *real shock for many I know,* or the Hunger Games, or the 5th Wave, this book was just probably not for my liking and that is why I just didn't enjoy it as much.

So, if you are into that kind of story you are going to want to go get it.

In the Last Girl on Earth, Li is the last human on Earth after an alien race hijacked the planet and destroyed all human life. Saved by the man she now calls father, Li lives undercover among the Abdoloreans (who look identical to humans besides the gills on their necks) as she struggles to keep up with their heightened abilities and intellect. But when a new boy comes into her life, she begins to wonder if she should continue to hide or if she should try to save what is left of the human race before it is gone for good.
This book was a good quick read. If you are looking for a light after work read or something to enjoy on a car ride, you would definitely enjoy this book. One thing that contributed to this was the plot. Quick and easy to understand, it flowed well as the story went on, keeping me hooked on the story and immersed in what was going on. Though it was predictable at times, I still wanted to keep going through and to find out what happens next in Li’s story.
Another great aspect of this book was the setting. Beautiful and well developed, the world was something that made the story that much more interesting. I loved how the author continued to add little tidbits about the world throughout the story; such as the other planets that one could explore, or the various technologies and information that they hold to be standard knowledge. For regular novels, information like this would be dismissed as unimportant but in this book, it only helped to build the story and make it even better. Another thing that I enjoyed was the descriptions of the alien race. Not quite the same as the extra information, some of the background information on the aliens actually seemed to be something that could become a major role in the next book. Discussions of their cruelty to other races and random “peacekeeping” attacks are things that we learn about more and more as the main character does so, something that actually changes the reader’s along with the main character’s opinion of them as the book goes on. I really liked this because it felt like the author was giving the reader mini sneak peaks into the next book.
Finally, though some of the characters did seem like your stereotypical characters for a novel like this and were the most predictable part of the story, they still had some enjoyable aspects about them. The main character’s “sister” for example was one of these characters as she continued to surprise me as the book went on. Most of the time, it felt as though these side characters were some of the most developed in the book.
Overall, I would recommend this book to someone looking for a quick read that while being pretty predictable, is enjoyable and immersive. Despite being a near opposite and a different genre, I would recommend this book to fans of Geekerella, another book that I felt was predictable I ended up enjoying. In the end, just because some books are predictable and bad, there are still some that are predictable and end up being great and enjoyable books.

Noteworthy experiences while reading this book: Could have been amazing

Check out author's other books? Maybe
Recommend this book? No

Notes and Opinions: This one just didn't work out for me at all and I ended up DNFing it. I wish the author would have focused more on Li's loneliness about being the last human in the world. This book could have been so epic but as it sits it just didn't work out for me. The instalove was horrible and the story and characters to me felt like they weren't fully formed.

Go Into This One Knowing: one dimensional characters, instalove

Li has a secret. She is a human passing as an Abdolorean on the Earth that they conquered. The Abdoloreans wiped out all human life on Earth as a punishment for the way humans treated the planet. Li was saved by an Abdolorean scientist who has raised and trained her to pass as an alien.

Now that she is sixteen, Li is undergoing the tests that all young people her age must pass in order to determine what rank they will have when they are conscripted for seven years of mandatory military service. Her father believes that she needs to test in the top five percent in order to become an officer and keep her secret hidden.

She has managed to live a pretty isolated life with only her sister Zo and best friend Marabae allowed to get close to her. But now a new boy named Ryn has come to Earth. His father is still in the Force and Ryn has lived on many planets. Ryn's father wants him to follow his footsteps into a career in the Force by Ryn wants to become a scientist instead. The two fall in love despite knowing that they would be unlikely to be assigned to the same planet for their seven years of service.

Competing for officer's rank is Braxon who is one of Li's classmates. He is also dating Zo even though Li has tried to tell her that he isn't a very nice person.

This was a nice science fiction story. I did have some questions as I was reading. I wondered how a species of beings could justify exterminating the whole human race. They didn't seem to need the planet and were devoting a whole lot of resources to trying to heal it. I wondered about an alien race whole goal was to bring harmony to the universe through the use of military force. I also wondered about the whole idea of kids of sixteen taking tests to determine their status in the military.

Fans of science fiction with some romance will enjoy this story. There is certainly room for a story about what happens next for Li and Ryn since the ending was rather ambiguous.

The Last Girl on Earth has an awesome premise-- on a future Earth, aliens have taken over, eliminating the human species. Li is the last human on Earth, pretending to be one of the invading alien species. As she prepares for her future with a post-graduation-like Assessment, she struggles to hide her identity while falling in love.

This book is incredibly underdeveloped and was much more of a love story than a story of survival. I can't even come up with three adjectives to describe any of the characters, and I didn't care what happened to any of them. Tedious and dull-- but if another author attempted to take on this plot, I think I would try reading it again!

I received an ARC copy from netgalley for my honest review,  so thank you netgalley and publishers for offering me this book! ♡
This book was alot different than I expected. The book is all about friendships, love, and family. I enjoyed the humanity of non-human beings. The story had a lot of deeper, well thought out ideas, but there is so much more the author could have done and explained. Im still wondering about some things lol This was my first book by this author, however I did enjoy it. It was fast paced and just alltogether an easy read. I give this book a 4.5 star rating!

I feel like the overall idea for this story was good and strong, but it just scratched the surface. If the author dove deeper into some issues the book would have a much higher rating for me. Li knowing she is the last human on Earth could have been a big thing to explore and really think about. It gets touched on occasionally but could have gone much deeper. The romance factor isn't necessarily "insta love" that young adult novels are famous for, but it did feel a tiny bit rushed.

The ending of the book is also extremely rushed and slightly open ended. I was really hoping for more. It doesn't seem setting up for a sequel, it just stops.

Lots of potential but sadly just falls short.

Last Girl on Earth follows the tales of a human girl pretending to be alien in a world of aliens. She falls in love with some guy she knew for like a week and now her life is completely changed.
This book started out with some weird references. The girl says that the things she says are reminiscent of whales and winter but she hasn’t seen either so how is she able to know what they look like?

Also this book is tiny (146 pages) but because I found it so boring and bland the short length made me happy.

This book is so hard to review because there was nothing to it and it was just fluffy marshmallow filling which is a pity because the cover was so pretty.

Was I supposed to find the relationship cute? Because I didn’t it was so predictable and boring. Talk about instalove to the max. This was literally a badly written YA Contemporary in a scifi setting and I was not there for it.
The plot wasn’t very good and the writing style was interesting but it didn’t help to make up for the lackluster plot.
The world building is weak to nonexistent so I’m not very sure what I read.
The author just threw in some conflicts here and there that were just weirdly mashed together and it was just ughhh godawful.
Sorry if my review is really harsh, but I wanted to be completely honest.

“‘No matter what anyone says, I want you to know that you always have a choice. You can choose to do the right thing.’ He pauses. 'Sometimes doing the right thing isn’t doing what you’re told.’”

I received a free e-ARC through NetGalley from the publishers at Random House Children’s/Delacorte Press.

Li is the last human left on Earth. When the Abdoloreans first came to her planet, they were there to help, but humans proved too destructive to survive. Li’s father took her from the planet before the nuclear bombs went off and returned with her when it was safe, raising her as one of his own alongside his Abdolorean daughter, Zo. Li has always lived in secret, and she must work twice as hard to be as strong and clever as an Abdolorean. With an assessment coming up that will decide her entire future, Li can’t afford to be distracted by the new boy, Ryn, and she has to decide between surviving in safety and putting herself in danger by living a full life.

This book never quite took off for me, and it fails to really develop past its interesting concept. It’s difficult to tell what direction it’s going to take because the conflict isn’t obvious for most of the book, and then it resolves too quickly to be satisfying. The places where it has the potential to be most interesting–Li’s feelings about the loss of her entire race, the Abdolorean culture, and whether or not the Abdolorean invasions on other planets are justified (which could make an interesting parallel between British/American colonialism)–are left mostly unexplored, and the story suffers from it. Blogier could have a fascinating world if she went past the surface details, and those were the times I was most interested in the novel.

For the most part, the writing is good on a sentence level, and I never felt distracted by it. The relationships are a little overdramatic; it’s the end of the world when Li and Ryn have some setbacks, and neither of the romances are as interesting as Li and Zo’s sister relationship, which is probably the strongest in the novel. The characters themselves aren’t overwhelming. I never really got a good sense of Li; her descriptions are split between her own struggles to keep up with the Abdoloreans and keep her secret and the somewhat startling way that her friends see her, which is among the best of all of them. Outside of that, they all seem like fairly typical teenagers, with the exception of Braxon. He’s a lukewarm villain, and I had trouble seeing his motivations.

As I mentioned, the end conflict is a little too quick and neat for me, and the rest of the novel is open-ended. I think I would have found it frustrating had I been more invested in it, but at that point, it was much like everything else in failing to have an impact. The younger demographic of YA readers might like it for its easy romance and science fiction, which is appropriate because it’s all fairly PG-13. I didn’t dislike it, but it’s just kind of… forgettable.

I review regularly at brightbeautifulthings.tumblr.com.