This book is tragic. Gosh, my heart is broken for young Leah who had everything and then nothing after absolutely everything is taken from her in such a short time and at such a young age. My momma heart almost couldn’t handle this book. It was hard to read, but I loved Leah so much I kept going because I needed her to have a happy ending. Thank you to the author for bringing this tragic time of history to life within this book.

Maeve the cat also had my heart in this book. I’m such a cat lover - that was a special touch.

REVIEW: The Last Carolina Girl || Sourcebooks {partner}

Genre: Historical Fiction
Format: 📖
Pub Date: 2.28.2023
Star Rating: ☆☆☆.5

“Truth be told, I remember most things about that day, as typical as it was until it wasn’t anymore.”

The Last Carolina Girl explores one (of many) deeply disturbing parts of our country’s history. It takes a hard look at the mistakes of our past and the consequence that those mistakes had on innocent lives. It’s a heartbreaking and traumatic story from start to finish, and while it did have moments of happiness, it was ultimately tragic because it is based on actual events.

I know that The Last Carolina Girl was blurbed for fans of Where the Crawdads Sing, but, in my opinion, I don’t see the comparison. They both deal with a young child who is essentially orphaned, but the two books are considerably dissimilar. Again, just my opinion, so take it with a grain of salt.

I recommend reading the author’s note of The Last Carolina Girl before reading the book - it will give away a crucial part of the story, but I believe the author’s note makes the story have a more meaningful impact.

👧🏽 Coming-of-Age
🤏🏼 Short but impactful
💨 Ending felt a tad rushed
😡 State Eugenics
📝 Read the author’s note

I recommend reading The Last Carolina Girl if you enjoyed reading Necessary Lies by Diane Chamberlain or Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez.

It seems this book just isn’t for me. At 55% I found myself skimming paragraphs and finally forced myself to call it what it is and DNF it.

Being the perspective of a 14 year old, the writing reads younger than I tend to enjoy. I felt for Leah, whose story is nothing short of tragic, though I somehow never quite connected with her. I had to check Goodreads again to see if I missed the YA label, since that isn’t really my thing, but it is simply listed as Historical Fiction.

I was very interested to see how the story progressed with the state eugenics board. However, by over halfway through the book, it hadn’t been brought up. I believe it was lightly hinted at a couple of times, but it would be easy to miss if you didn’t realize it was part of the story.

I wish I could have enjoyed this more and, from reviews I’ve seen, it seems many have. Perhaps I should have pushed through to the point that the eugenics board came to the forefront, but I figured that if I wasn’t invested over halfway through, I should probably move on.

Note: I don’t like to give star ratings to books I DNF because it doesn’t feel fair to rate a story I didn’t reach the end of. Netgalley requires it to submit so I went with the middle ground in an effort not to skew the ratings of readers who have finished the book.

This was a very interesting book About a girl called L SEAH SPAYN. She had a really good upgrade But her Father was very poor and they had Too struggle for everything that you need. In life Father was employed By t Buy a man name BAR ES. He was Very He's very wealthy and ran the store and lumber company. Her mother died when she was BO RN. She loved To run in the woods. Her father was trying to teach her things but was very hard. Her next door neighbor's son Russell was her best friend. She did not have much but she had a lot of love. Then her father died and things went really Sideways. It was very hard for her and she was could not go to school she could not think. Next her neighbors try to help her. Then the state got involved and It's ENT Her to a Foster home just outside of Charlotte North Carolina. She became the maid and the mother Was very mean to her. The youngest one called Mary Ann she really couldn't relate to her. She loved nature just like LEA H. She also helped Connect with the boy Name Russell. She really missed everything about this because she was Who is being yielder. The oldest child Jean trying to be really friendly with her. It has a lot of twisting turns in this book And I'm really headed home when you find out what really happened to this little girl. It does have a happy ending. She wrote to the boy to ask her to come to the state fair. And this is one thing started getting really interesting. She really wanted to go home and really head home with The father of this family really helped out at the end Because he got from where she needed to be.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC digital copy. I was not compensated for this review and all opinions are my own.

Wow! The Last Carolina Girl was heartbreaking, inspiring, and all-around beautiful in its characterization. The evilness of our history continues to shock me, and yet I am forever thankful that novels such as The Last Carolina Girl exist to provide a face to that pain.. Such an immensely powerful story of loss at an early age, and yet maintaining hope through it all.

A solid 4 stars and my deepest respect for the author. Definitely will keep a lookout for future books by Meagan Church!

THE LAST CAROLINA GIRL would make a great book club novel for those that enjoy historical fiction and stories about family and coming of age. Reminiscent of Where the Crawdad's Sing, it's the type of story that will tug at your heartstrings as she fights for her family and her independence.

Thank you Netgalley and publisher for an advanced copy!

As a debut novel, The Last Carolina Girl pulls no punches. In the span of a few hundred pages, fourteen-year-old Leah Payne experiences the many ways in which life can change at the drop of a hat: from the split second when the person you love most is claimed by the universe to the harsh edicts of a corrupt government institution. Many thanks to Sourcebooks Landmark for providing an ARC copy for me to review.

As someone who has lived in the South for most of her life, the ability to picture the scenery Meagan Church described played a huge role in how much I enjoyed this book. Even if readers have never set foot in coastal Carolina, I can attest that they’ll have no trouble at all mapping the terrain as they follow the protagonist’s own poignant journey through adolescence and the turmoil that the region experienced in the 1930s. This attention to detail also spilled from the surroundings in the book to the pointed interactions between characters, leaving little room for doubt as to their intentions and inner musings as the story played out. In a way, this made them almost transparent, even predictable, but with a plot such as this, it’s my opinion that readers will still have plenty to speculate on as they go.

With the state eugenics board looming behind and supporting one social and medical horror after the next, The Last Carolina Girl sheds light on one of the not-so-secret truths about the past that still stain the South’s reputation today. Given the controversy surrounding these events, it almost seems as if the plot lines focusing on the exploits and tailored trials of a teenaged girl would get lost in the greater scheme of things. However, Church does an excellent job of keeping the story local, so to speak, and introduces new ways for readers to invest themselves in Leah as a person, not just as a function of the book and the history it represents.

Despite the heavier subject matter, the prose itself also reads as though the reader were having a heart-to-heart conversation with the characters, especially Leah. Applying this personal touch down to the very choices involving which words she used to insert exposition is, in this reader’s opinion, something that will set Church apart from authors of similar works. Informative, yet engaging, the description of events from the time we meet Leah to the book’s conclusion is an almost perfect combination of straightforward and poetic and makes it clear that the protagonist is indeed a bit of an old soul even before her life is irrevocably disrupted.

Readers who often lose themselves in historical fiction told through younger voices like Lily’s Crossing, Where the Crawdads Sing, and Out of the Dust will appreciate the mature topics covered in The Last Carolina Girl as told with the relative innocence of a child forced to become an adult before her time.

A compelling novel with a main character to root for! Would make a great book club selection with lots to discuss - families, poverty, choices, and love. Thank you NetGalley and Sourcebooks for the ARC!!

I was pleasantly surprised by this author and her writing. A plethora of emotions ran through me with this one. My heart just went out to Leah. The author did a wonderful story telling thru the child’s eyes of what life would be like when everything you own and everyone you love are taken away.

My only con is I would have thought the Eugenics program would have been explained or had more of the storyline. I had read other books concerning that topic so I knew the details, but they were brushed over in this story.

I highly recommend, it is a page turner that tugs at your heart strings with a great ending. High 5 stars.

Received an ARC from Sourcebooks Landmark and NetGalley for my unbiased review – This one comes in with 5 stars.

Set in the 1930’s on the lush Carolina coast, this is the immersive story of a young girl, Leah, against the world who taps into emotional reserves beyond her years in her journey to find a place to belong. Inspired by the author’s heartbreaking family history, this novel touches upon the practice of forced sterilization that was commonplace in the US at the time, in a hopeful story of courage in the face of cruelty.

Meagan Church’s writing is beautifully descriptive and full of depth and emotions. Leah’s story is tragic, but she keeps her hope and continues to see the good in everything. I didn’t know much about the eugenics movement but the Author’s note at the end was really interesting. I was shocked to find that Hitler used the eugenics movement in America as his prototype for his cleansing of the races. I highly recommend this book.

Inspired by true events in the author’s family, the novel focuses on the practices of the North Carolina Eugenics Department in the 1930’s. Leah Payne is an innocent girl who is unfortunately orphaned in her early teens - couple her parentless status with abject poverty, little education (and possibly a learning disability, and a history of seizures (epilepsy, perhaps?) and she’s a textbook candidate for the state to “help.”

What could have been an utterly depressing tale is buoyed by nice writing and a very loving father-daughter relationship and a genuine friendship that endures a lifetime. The Author’s Note is also a heartfelt addition to this national travesty that affected far too many for entirely too long.

Thanks to Sourcebooks and NetGalley for an opportunity to review.

4.5 Stars

I hate to say it, but this is the first time I have heard of Eugenics and the many people it affected. Then find out that it is still happening in some legal guardianship instances. And I quote," Is forced sterilization still happening in the United States?
In states that do not have laws, forced sterilizations might still be happening to people under guardianship. This is because many guardians have a lot of power to make health care decisions for people under guardianship. They usually do not need to ask a judge before deciding what health care someone gets." Unquote.

This book is not totally about Eugenics, but it does happen, and it isn't pretty. This whole family isn't pretty. This book starts in the 1930's end the epilogue ends in the year 2006. Leah had a very difficult childhood, at least to our standards today. She lost her mother in childbirth and her father more than a decade later. Among other tragendies. Now she has nowhere to go, so a family opts to be a sort of Fostercare family...or are they really? Secrets and lies abound.

This was a difficult read with no perky happy ending. It does have a satisfying ending, although I wish the author would have delved into a deeper confrontation with the family that took her in.

I recommend this book to those who are interested in Southern history from the 1930s

*ARC supplied by the publisher Sourcebooks Landmark, the author, and NetGalley.

The Last Carolina Girl is an extremely emotional book, filled with heartache. Leah lives a hardscrabble life with her father, but she is content and hopeful, living the way they do. Her world comes tumbling down during an ice storm, stripping her of every sense of comfort she has, and forcing her to live with a foster family—who are not the family she yearns for to fill the void in her life. Set in 1935, Leah has a very tough road ahead, in ways she can’t even begin to fathom as a young girl of 14. My heart broke for her, and many scenes were like a gut punch as she endured mistreatment and much much worse. I loved Leah—she tried so hard to stay positive, hoping to find a way back to her home, wishing for acceptance, friendship, love, and family. I applaud the author for dealing with some extremely difficult subjects honestly, and for giving us a heroine we cheered on through the worst of times.

A tragic life for one so young, Leah is only 14 years old and has lost both her parents, her home, and all that is familiar to her. She also is poor and suffers from spells. Those are the final two straws that allow the unthinkable to happen. Removed from her home since birth and into a family that she doesn't know, Leah quickly realizes she is a helper, not a family member. Her guardian is a society maven wannabe with deep resentment for her own past.
Set in pre-WWII, The Last Carolina Girl touches on a somewhat unknown practice that lasted far too long - the sterilization of the poor and those that seemed disposed of mental or emotional issues otherwise known as eugenics. Bodily autonomy was (still) not fully realized for a woman at this time. And into this historical timeframe, Lean is trapped.
I was caught up in the life of Leah from the beginning of this book and wanted her to make a connection with someone with some depth. The subject matter, while horrific, is compelling. Big things happen but we never really get to see much of the fallout as the story seems to jump around a bit.
I give 3.5 stars rounded up to 4 stars.
Thank you to Sourcebooks for access to my early copy. All opinions are my own.

Southern fiction at its best.

The main character is Leah and she has had a tough time in her young life having already lost both parents by age 14. The story takes place in 1935.

It is a good read with heartbreak and many other emotions flowing. A good view of some dark past history which even today we try and ignore.

Will appeal to many fans of southern fiction. Very well researched and written.

Right from the start, I loved Leah and Maeve, her cat, “two strays without a place to call home.” THE LAST CAROLINA GIRL is a simple story and yet a heartbreaking one of a young girl who faces unimaginable obstacles in her short life. After her father’s death, Leah is torn from her home and her best friend Jesse and placed in a family hiding a terrible secret. She is forced to serve as a helpmate for a cruel and unhappy woman.
Hope is written on every page, for despite her heartaches and losses, she never gives up, and her Carolina spirit remains unshakable.

Meagan Church has written a thought-provoking and unforgettable book. Every character is strong and well-developed, and she easily conveys the thoughts of a young girl. The ending is delicately foreshadowed throughout the story, and the reader can’t help but want to rush to Leah’s side and rescue her.

This work of fiction gave me a historical insight that I had somehow missed. I had never heard of the American eugenics movement, a plan begun in the early 1900’s to remove those who were genetically defective by breeding out undesirable traits. THE LAST CAROLINA GIRL is an intense read that reveals a blunt and cruel reality of our past.
This story is hard-hitting, but the silver lining revealed is the toughness of human spirit that always rises in those who refuse to lose heart.

I felt so many emotions while reading this very poignant, heartbreaking, wonderful and beautiful story! I couldn't put this book down! I look forward to reading the next book by this excellent debut author!

Told from the perspective of a fourteen-year-old, Leah's story is one of a sheltered life. She and her father live in a one-room shack, and she has no friends except for Jesse. As she leaves the area following the death of her father, her lack of social skills and her desire for family and affection come through.

This book has been compared to Where the Crawdads Sing, which I enjoyed as an audiobook. The slow pace and the first-person narrative made it enjoyable to listen vs reading it. When it came to The Last Carolina Girl my feelings run in the same direction, I think I would have enjoyed it more in audio format. It was just such a slow paced story that really lacked character development for everyone other than Leah. It would have been great to get a glimpse into the head of her caregiver .

The blurb gives some of the story away with some of it not happening until the 80% mark, spoiler alert!

The ending was abrupt, and I would have loved to read more about the next few years in this young girl's life. Fortunately, the author included notes, gave a lot of detail about the program in the US during this time and in subsequent years.

Take my review with a grain of salt, I seem to be in the minority with my thoughts.

I am grateful to Sourcebooks (via NetGalley) for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review. Thank you.

The Last Carolina Girl by Meagan Church is a beautifully written book. It tells the story of Leah, a recently orphaned little girl who goes through a myriad of trials, as she moves through life. It is a book I could not wait to get back to, each time I had to put it down. Those who are fans of Where the Crawdads Sing would also love The Last Carolina Girl. I enjoyed reading this book and look forward to future books by Meagan Church. I received a DIGITAL Advance Reader Copy of this book from #NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Wow! Where to start? This novel was hard to read but in a good way. I was genuinely bawling for Leah and all she went through. It was difficult to read at times, but just because something is difficult to read about doesn't mean it should be forgotten. That something as shameful as the Eugenics movement could have taken place in our own country is shameful. I appreciate NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review The Last Carolina Girl by Meagan Church.