High off of recently finishing The Counselors by Jessica Goodman, I was excited to pick up another thriller set at camp. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy this one quite as much. Too much of the action takes place off page. And the pacing wasn't enough to keep my attention. Instead of fully dnfing, I did skim through to the end. The one thing I did like about The Last Girls Standing is that it went a different direction than most thrillers. That doesn't mean I liked the ending. It was just different. If you're just looking for another YA thriller or can't get enough of them The Last Girls Standing will be perfect for you. I'm a Librarian who has recently ventured into more thrillers. So I'm not exactly the target audience. But I do read A LOT of YA. Take my opinions with a grain of salt and maybe pick up the book and decide for yourself.

Thank you to Netgalley and G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers for providing me with a review copy.

This is a horror/thriller book written by someone who has no idea how to write horror/thriller books. This seemed very generic. Nothing really original. This one was not for me.

The last girls standing was such an easy read & I read it really fast. The book did not go where I thought it was, definitely was going through a loop of thoughts of how it was going to end. A lot of the action is at the begging of the book. It had queer representation.

Thank You Net Galley For The ARC.
The Last Girls Standing

Initial Guess for Review Based on First Chapter: 3??
Actual Review After Reading Book: 1 Star.

Sloan finds a flyer on her schools bulletin board for a camp counselor position. In order to get away from her overbearing adoptive mother, Sloan interviews for the position and gets the job. Once there, she meets Cherry Addison Barnes and instantly falls in love.

Machete wielding masked killers butcher everyone except Sloan and Cherry leaving them as the last girls standing.

After the murders, Sloan and Cherry try to live normal lives while going to therapy. Sloan deflects most of the questions her therapist asks her. The events are partially blocked out due to a concussion she received. Yet, vivid memories and nightmares haunt Sloan. After finding a rabbit mask in her girlfriends new apartment, Sloan takes it upon herself to finally unlock what really happened that night at camp.

This can be a best seller, if you don’t publish it, rewrite, condense and edit scenes to makes them better. Make it more exciting. This was not it. The “therapy” sessions need to be reworked. I’ve seen more action on a nature channel.


Comments:

Right off the bat, I love the representation but I felt there was more chemistry between Sloan and her best friend Connor than I did with Sloan and Cherry.
Then I felt like there was no chemistry between any of the characters.
There were a lot of chapters that were really wordy that would have been fine being three pages like a James Patterson novel. I found myself skimming to the dialogue at times. Reading the essential bits. There were scenes that induced anxiety and they were wordy but it worked because it was building tension and suspense in a chapter. Sloan is frustrating, Connor, cherry, Allison are pushy and eerie and likes to gas light. It feels like there was forced drama in certain areas to further the plot. It didn’t have me wanting to read the next chapter. It had me dreading reading the rest of the novel. After ten chapters, I started to get anxious because i knew it was going to be a terrible rating.

Near chapter 18, I started skimming the novel because it had too much explaining decisions, describing minor things, and character dialogue with characters that had little to no chemistry. I was in it to find out the ending at this point. I wanted to DNF the book but I wanted the ending to change my mind. I don’t care if I missed details after this point. I was just tired of the word vomit. This reminded me of when I read Anxious People and I could not get over how many words that book contained versus how it could have been condensed.

The story just didn’t bring intensity. For the subject matter, you want Sloan to be scared for her life and not trusting anyone. You want clues that she could die at any point. It always felt like Sloan was too safe. It never felt like a cat and mouse chase, it felt like Sloan messing around and never finding out.

Everyone controls Sloan by withholding information from her and gas lighting her just so that she isn’t in a bad mood or feeling sad or scared, instead of being open and honest with her. How come Sloan had to find something out in every chapter by a coincidence or because another character let it slip.

These characters are not likable.

Why do these characters ask so many questions and don’t wait for an answer from the other character????????? ~ this is one long question because I read so many questions in this book.

What a coincidence that this is the second person to say “you came in guns a blazing,” after they didn’t tell Sloan something. Beth tapped her lips. “You came in here, guns blazing.”
Why is this still a YA trope of “we can’t tell you something because you’re young and reckless and you’re not a real adult with real emotions.”

Why the hell did the toxic therapist think comparing Sloan to the killer was an okay thing to do?
This makes me not want to get therapy.

This had to be written on chat GPT.


I was hoping this book was going to be good. I was hoping it would make me anxious to read the next chapter but it had me dreading opening this book. I wanted to be fair and provide a fair review of what I did and did not like because this was not it.

Not good. Nothing happens. Nothing. I mean nothing.did I say nothing. Like Sloan wakes up and walks to places and that’s it. That’s the whole book.

Good concept poor execution. Very poor execution.

What I did like:

I liked the social commentary that when rich people die, they seem to matter more than normal people. For example, there is a rich girl and her parents alluded during a 60 minutes interview that they think their daughter should have survived and Sloan and Cherry should have taken her place. This book is about how difficult it is to heal from traumatic experience and how everyone wants you to move on right away. And trying to heal because everyone keeps looking down at you with pity.

It was nice to see someone talking about how sometimes police can be blasé about a potential danger even though they have all the evidence to prove that someone might do something, the Edward Cunningham story reminded me a lot of the Jeffery dahmer case.

The cult was interesting and I wish there were more scenes trying to infiltrate it to find out more about it. I wanted more information about the cult and hope deep it went.


Chapter notes of Good/Bad Things:

Chapter 5- Ewwwwww, gaslighting.??? Odd chapter…

Chapter 6 - psychological thriller. Unlocking the mind and memories. Trippy. Love it. Here for it.

Chapter 9: weird that Connor conveniently turned on the TV.

Chapter 17: chapters missing from book sash gave her after Sloan gets off of connors car. Suspicious….

Chapter 18: should have been chapter 7 and chapter 7 should have been where she found the box and was able to look through it. Word Vomit. Ma’am please condense.

Chapter 19: should have been chapter 9. This book could have been paced better. Rearrange a few chapters and take out a few chapters.


Book Summary Breakdown By Bulked Chapter:
Chapter 1 - 10: Sloan trying to live normal life, Sloan finds the mask, she starts to unlock memories, plea deal for killer announced.

Chapters 11 - 15: Sloan takes it upon herself to dig deeper in to the mystery of who the killers were and to find out more information about the pod Morte Homius.

Chapters 15 - 20: it’s been twenty chapters and nothing has happened. What am I reading? This book killed me the same way the author killed the camp counselors, brutally and slowly…

This sections from chapter 20 is the reason I dislike this book:

“We have to stop kidding ourselves, Sloan. You are not okay. You’re not. We might have both survived the attack, but you’re not living. Not even a little. Last night you said I should have left you there to die, and now you’re all guns blazing wanting to run back to the person who left you catatonic for days. I do get to decide. Your mother does get to decide. You are not well, Sloan. You’re scaring me more and more every day. You actually accused me of being a part of Morte Hominus last night! You’re not thinking straight!”
“Because of you. Because of you and your secrets! You’re constantly keeping things from me. And I’m not just talking about the stuff in your closet. But also this! The Fox! Would you have even told me about Kevin’s thing if I hadn’t been there when Magda gave you the invite?” “
“Stop calling him ‘The Fox’ like he’s some magical movie villain or something! He’s not. He’s just a regular man in a creepy mask. We are not the babes in the wood. He is not a cunning fox. This is not a fucking fairy tale. His name is Edward Cunningham, and he lived in a goddamn van! He’s forty-three years old and never had a job or a family or contributed to this world in any way, and I wish he’d fucking fry.”

Sloan is right. They treat her as fragile and they don’t help her. They lie to her, baby her, and gas light her.

Chapter 21-25: Im tired of this book. And I’m only ten chapter away from finishing and nothing has happened. This had to be written by someone who uses AI or doesn’t know what keeping the audience/reader engaged means. When I say nothing happens, nothing happens. It’s been 26 chapters.

Sis, you need to condense. This is too much.
The whole book is Sloan waking up and going to bed. I guess it’s fitting because this book felt like a terrible fever dream. It felt like it would never end and nothing was happening!!!!!!!!!!!

Why couldn’t this book include all the families of the dead?
Why did it have to be the Sloan show?
I don’t care about someone grasping for straws and doing nothing in the whole book. Maybe that was the point of the book. Maybe the message was that nobody cares about survivors, they just care about what they went through. But why ,are it this boring?????

Noooooooooo!!!!! What is this chapter:

Chapter 26:
She goes to her hypnotist fake therapist for help and her therapist decides that she is cut off from uncovering her own memories because it’s too much for Sloan.
Did the author do any sensitivity readings for this. This a problematic piece of work.
“You can’t cut me off like that.”
“I’m not a drug dealer,” Beth said, her voice hard. This was clearly not up for debate. “I’ve given you a substantial amount of leeway in this process. More than most. And I need to maintain my professional integrity. Frankly, I shouldn’t have even brought you down today.”

Every time the main character is going to find something out, everyone around Sloan keeps informations from her.

“I’m not a doctor, Sloan, as you love to point out. I think perhaps you’ve outgrown your use for me.” “
“Are you firing me?” Sloan laughed. Of all the possible outcomes, this one was unexpected. “That’s not very live, laugh, love of you, Beth.”

Chapter 26 - The End: not worth the read.


Character List:

Sloan: Main character. One of the last girls standing. Adopted. Distant after the incident. PTSD induced flashbacks. Has a birth mark that intersects with her injury she received the day of the murders. Took sixteen stitches to patch her up. Environmentalist. Would go for bands like Doha cat and Olivia rodrigo. Is good at reading people.

Beth: therapist. Sloan doesn’t consider her a real therapist.

Cherry: sloans girlfriend. Brown hair. One of the two last girls standing. In to grunge bands. Dark. Pessimistic. Giving Billy Loomis - Scream Vibes. Freckles. Sun-kissed skin.

Allison Thomas - 46 years old. sloans adoptive mother. Sent her to therapy. Overprotective. Hawk parent.

Connor - sloans best friend since childhood. Golden brown skin. Dark curly hair. Bisexual daddy ❤️. Diversity yassss.

Rachel - connors girlfriend that thinks Sloan has to get over the ordeal that happened.

Rahul - Indian, tall

Becket - wore expensive hiking boots all the time. Ableist/capitalist according to Cherry.

Simon - sloans brother, plays baseball

Brad - sloans adoptive father.

Kevin - the middle-aged camp director who had turned his white skin various shades of red and brown due to his aversion to sunscreen, and had a penchant for listening to Nirvana and Soundgarden on repeat all day.

Cherry Addison Barnes -
Charla - was in the video interview with Kevin for sloans interview.


Dahlia - a white college sophomore from downstate with the longest, prettiest brown hair that Sloan had ever seen;


Hannah, a Korean American who considered not keeping up with the latest celebrity gossip a moral failing;

Anise, who once boasted without a hint of irony that she could trace her ancestors back to the Mayflower.

Shane, a quiet Black boy with an unusual obsession with cryptids, who upon meeting who upon meeting Sloan had launched into a speech about the Mothman’s continued relevance in American history, and had barely uttered another word after.

Ronnie, the camp cook, a thirty-four-year-old Black man obsessed with perfecting his own snow cone recipe,

Magda - artist, also has an only fans. Benefited from the murders and took advantage and did interviews for her daughter.

Edward Cunningham - the Fox. Arrested. His cyanide pill was a dud.

Sasha - edwards so called sister. White hair, too much make up.

Marco - Italian man that changed the pod.

Fox - Edward Cunningham
Bear - nothing
Stag - nothing
Lion - nothing
Bobcat - nothing
Bunny - Marco

Typo:

Chapter 9: Today, we were able to reach a plea agreement the (that) satisfies all parties involved, and we’re looking forward to transferring him into a maximum-security facility in the near future.

Chapter 15:
Weird wording.
I can’t tell (take out tell or explain) explain ‘why you’ or ‘why there’ or any of the other things that you asked in your email. But maybe,”

This book was unfortunately disappointing to me. The premise of a summer camp massacre hooked me in but all the action actually happening before the book was off putting.

I also struggled with the depiction of PTSD and coping in this book. While the paranoia and poor coping skills are VERY realistic, the turn they take as the book goes on felt a bit insensitive.

I LOVED the queer rep in here and the premise of the massacre itself was interesting. The execution was just off.

I was so excited for this final girls from a summer camp who survived and then fell in love story, but I’m not sure that I got what I was hoping for. The book was good, although very very weird, and it was a fast read. I think part of my problem was the majority of the action of the story happened before the book began and I was hoping for a little more of that. I will say that the book didn’t go where I was expecting it to and the ending had an interesting twist, but the story itself and the main mystery felt muddled and didn’t have a clear resolution when I wanted one. I love the queer representation, especially in the horror genre where you see it so seldomly, but I didn’t like the relationship and didn’t understand it. It wasn’t a healthy relationship, which did fit the story, but made me regret that queer representation. Overall the book was ok, I gave it 3.5 stars which I rounded up for the twist and I would give this author another shot in the future.

* Thank you Netgalley and G.P. Putnam's Sons for this ARC in exchange for my honest review. *

I really wanted to like The Last Girls Standing. At times, I did like it - but around 45% in, I started to develop this unshakeable irritation with Sloan.

Here's a quick recap: Sloan and her girlfriend Cherry survived a massacre at the summer camp where they were camp counselors. In the aftermath, they're in love and rely heavily on each other as they navigate their grief, but somewhere along the way Sloan begins to doubt Cherry, and wonders if Cherry was a part of the attack at the summer camp.

Here's where I lost it: Sloan's refusal to see ANY of the truth that was right there. I won't get too in-depth about it, because it is a seriously baffling storyline at times, and it would be hard to comment on anything without spoiling it, but good god. Sloan had zero self-preservation skills. It was painful to read at times, and by the end of the book, I was just... confused. I don't understand why it ended the way it did, and I can't honestly say whether I liked the book or not. This will be one I have to sit on for a while to make a final decision, but for now, I'm rating it 3 stars - because I didn't hate all of it, but I'm not sure any of it made sense.

Sloan and Cherry meet at the camp they signed up to work at over the summer and become the sole survivors of a massacre that occurs right before the camp opens. Our story follows the aftermath as they try to process their experience and reintegrate back into normal society.
While Cherry has all of her memories from that night, Sloan is a complete blank. Cherry has filled in the blanks with her story, but is it the truth of what really happened? Will Sloan believe her or conduct her own fact-finding mission to get her memories back?

I enjoyed this book. It took me a little while to get into, being slow in the beginning, but once it gets going it is full of mystery, angst, and more questions. I definitely was not expecting what happened in the end and was quite surprised! If you're a fan of murder, mysteries, and plot twists, this one is definitely for you!

Unfortunately, this isn't working for me.

I see the words "summer camp massacre" and I have certain expectations. I expect campfires and I expect someone getting beaten with a canoe paddle. I mean, I can roll with the punches, but what I definitely didn't expect was a toxic relationship between two girls as they obsessively looked up news articles of the tragedy that they went through.

Sloan's highly suspicious of Cherry. They met a few days prior to this massacre and the injuries that she sustained don't seem to align with the story that Cherry is telling. I've never survived a murder spree, but it feels like sticking closer with a person you think is suspicious is an illogical choice to make?

I think that this book could have benefited with more visceral flashbacks of the trauma, a walk-through of what happened as Sloan tries to piece her memory back together. Instead, the very slow start delivers us color commentary about her varying levels of sadness through each funeral. I don't know.

The writing didn't work for me and I think had my expectations been different, maybe I'd have enjoyed this more.

DNF @45%; I am so sorry but I genuinely disliked this title. I hated the characters, and specifically the relationship between Sloan and Cherry. Even horror novels can have healthy depictions of relationships!! But this is not one of them. And honestly the plot was subpar. I really enjoyed "Some Girls Do" by Dugan but I'm starting to worry that maybe this author is not for me. I may try more in the future but I cannot force myself to finish this one.

I feel bad giving this book a one-star rating-- those are usually reserved for books I DNF. That being said, this book was not for me. You can probably tell by the fact that I started it at the very end of May and finished it half-way through July.

<i>The Last Girls Standing</i> follows two lone survivors of a summer camp massacre, Sloan and Cherry, who trauma bond and date. Sloan doesn't really remember what happened during the massacre-- but Cherry does. And Sloan doubts Cherry is telling her the full story. Desperate to find out what really happened, Sloan does some sleuthing on her own.

It has a fascinating premise, but here's the thing: it was done poorly.

Showing the effects of trauma wasn't done well-- I've been skimming other reviews and I think there's a general consensus that the representation was poor. I felt very disconnected to the characters and they weren't even likeable, which, if you've read any other review of mine, you'd know is the most important to me.

The book's not long, and miraculously, that screwed with the pacing. Nothing happens for the first half of the book, and the second half is just me side-eyeing everyone in the book. The books not long enough for me to see any literary justification for the extremely rushed ending.

I didn't like this book. I don't really DNF books anymore, but I was very close to doing that. The only reason I didn't was because by the time I read a third of the book, there wasn't much really left, so I just kind of went "why not?"

I'm sure that this book has it's own audience, but I wasn't a part of the demographic that would enjoy this.

I received an e-ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Great book, terrible ending.

I thought this was so well thought out. Sloane is one of two girls who survived a horrific mass murder at the summer camp they were counselors at. With a debilitating codependency, the two seek solace in one another because they are the only ones who know how to exist around each other. But, as Sloane goes deeper and deeper down a rabbit hole of searching for answers as to why them and who the killers really were, she begins to lose grip on reality. She doesn’t know who to trust and what is real.

If the point of this book was to just feel an overall unease, Dugan definitely succeeded. I was questioning every single thing the whole time. Unfortunately, the end made me furious!

You could not imagine a better summer sapphic slasher than Last Girls Standing, Jennifer Dugan creates a world that transports the reader back to the 90s era of horror films with a twist. Cherry and Sloan as protagonists are so interesting to follow as early on the reader can see that their romance where it is sweet and romantic has a dark side to it the trauma bond they share due to the summer before. I cannot recommend it enough for fans of Scream or Yellow Jackets

This book was excellent. I was nervous about the YA aspect of it(I didn’t realize when I put in for it that it was YA) but I truly enjoyed this one!!

Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest rating and review.

2.5/5

CW: mass murder, cult, blood, gore, suicide, abusive relationship, conspiracy theories, closed adoption (there’s probably a lot more, but these are the ones that come to mind.

This is a tough book to review. I was so invested in it that I read it in a day. It was fast paced with some twists and turns. However, I didn’t really like either of the main characters or most of the supporting characters. It was an interesting concept for a book, but I didn’t like a lot of the choices that were made. And the ending, quite frankly, sucked. As I was midway through, I was thinking about different possible endings and couldn’t come up with one I would’ve liked though. So even though I didn’t care for most everything about the book, it was still an exciting page-turner.

This book was utterly insane, I'm actually at a loss for words yet I kind of loved it? Most definitely will need to reread this because I'm baffled, I love a sapphic thriller but this one was so unique I started questioning Cherry along with Sloane and honestly started to feel like I was being gaslit I couldn't tell reality from delusions and that made it where i could not put this damn book down.

This is such a unique sapphic thriller just in time for pre-spooky season, thank you penguin teen for the e-arc! all opinions are my own

This book really had me at a solid 3, almost 4 star rating until the last 1/4 of the book. It really fell apart at the end. I am unsure if the ending was what the author went into the story wanting but it felt wrong. The rest of the story did not seem to fit, it was winding along and then at some point it went completely off the rails.

The plot of this book started predictable and became wildly confusing by the end. I felt that Sloan’s unraveling was there in an attempt to subvert stereotypical tropes of the genre, but instead it felt sudden and out of place. The author didn’t give us a reason to trust Cherry from the beginning, so the push and pull of whether or not she was innocent didn’t work. The character development was nonexistent, and I felt a bit uncomfortable with the portrayal of the traumatized characters. Yes, trauma is messy, and it doesn’t make sense, and it makes you act irrationally, but by the end, Cherry is still portrayed as overbearing and controlling, and Sloan is portrayed as crazy. Camp horror is having a renaissance as of late, but I feel this was not a necessary addition.

I really loved "Some Girls Do." In fact, it's one of my top Sapphic stories. And most of that is because Jennifer Dugan's prose is tight, her dialogue is believable, and characters are full, rich little universes. All of this to say, I was excited to get this ARC.

In a plot similar to kind of different storylines in Netflix's <i>Fear Street</i> trilogy, we have teen/young adult lesbian couple Cherry and Sloan as the only survivors of a <spoiler>potentially ritualistic</spoiler> killing spree at a summer camp. The story follows as Sloan tries to find the memories missing of that night, and figure out the motives of the killers <spoiler>(cult)</spoiler>.

For me, I enjoyed the experience of reading it. It's closer probably to a 2.5 stars for me than a 2, but I'm not going to split those hairs. I love the established relationship and the exploration of anxiety, depression, grief, and co-dependency as a result of trauma. It's always fun to be aware that you have an unreliable narrator you're focused on as a reader.

I think the twists and turns, purposefully misleading or not, felt very telegraphed. Like I said, I'm not a big thriller reader, but I've watched enough slashers to see the seams of this. However the story was propulsive and enjoyable. I don't regret spending time with them and the feelings of thrill and terror were there. I love that Jennifer Dugan wakes up and decides to write a genre. It's genuinely cool to see her skills at play. I'm lukewarm on this book, but can't wait to see what else comes up.

The Last Girls Standing was a queer young adult mysterious/horror read. Two girls survive a massacre at the summer camp they’re working at and become inseparable. One of the girls is really struggling to process what they’ve been through and is seeing all sorts of outlandish theories at every turn. Can she find her way past it?

I think people who like more horror-ish mysteries would like this story. That’s not really my vibe, so as the story progressed, I kind of lost interest because it seemed like it was going off the rails a bit. It wasn’t bad and could be a good, quick beach read for someone who enjoys this genre.