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.

Reminiscent of classic sleep away camp summer slasher films. Exciting, fast paced. Reading this story is a great way to spend the end of summer. Thank you Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review

I did not have a good time with this one. The characters were really...not great (irritating, is a better word probably). Being so annoyed by the characters really prevented me from getting into the story (along with the pacing of the story being so slow). I nearly put this down a few times, but I only pushed myself to finish it so that it would be over. I also could have done entirely without the sort-of half baked romance that was thrown in--it really didn't add anything to an already not very compelling story. The ending was okay, but that didn't really make up for the rest of the story. The premise for this one was really interesting, that's why I was so excited to get to read it early, but the execution felt like a rough first draft: the characters needed some umph, the plot was so slow, the romance was not developed enough to make me care at all. I do absolutely love the cover, but the meat of the story was not for me.

Sloan and Cherry are inseparable. Turns out you form pretty close bonds when you’re the only two survivors of a massacre at your summer camp. On that horrific night, 8 others were brutally murdered, but somehow Sloan and Cherry survived.

Months later, the two have become like a single entity. They are always together because they understand each other better than anyone else. Sloan trusts Cherry completely– especially since Sloan has no memory of the traumatic events and relies on Cherry’s account of what happened that night. But as new evidence emerges, Sloan starts to question what really happened. Is Cherry telling the truth? Or is she hiding something? Could this person Sloan loves with all her heart have played a part in the murders?

Whatever direction you think this book is going to go, I guarantee it will surprise you. There were multiple times I thought I had it figured out, but I was wrong every time. I’m not sure how I feel about the ending, but I appreciated that it diverted from my expectations. I also liked that this book was less slasher and more psychological thriller. There are so many summer camp slasher books, it was interesting to read about how the characters cope (or try to) after the fact.

Sloan’s inner dialogue was exhausting at times, as she kept debating whether she could trust Cherry or not. It got a bit repetitive, but it was also realistic inner dialogue, so it’s hard to critique that. I would say I didn’t like the characters, but this is a book filled with unreliable characters, so that’s kind of the point. This is all to say I was frustrated with the characters as I was reading, but that also made me read more because I wanted to know what they were going to do. So while it sounds like negative criticism, it’s actually not.

I have so much more I want to say, but it’s all spoilers, so I will just say that the more I think on it, the more I think I like this book? I can tell I will be going back and forth a lot. But either way, I will be thinking about this one for a long time.

This book has everything: lesbians, slasher sleep away camp, survivors guilt, cults, ritualistic killings, soulmates, annoying little brothers, shitty therapists, and Reddit crime fighters.

Great story for any horror fan. I highly recommend this book! I want to thank the publisher and NetGalley for my Ark copy please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review. Sloan is absolutely enthralled with her girlfriend Cherry they are both survivors of a massacre that happened while training to be counselors at the money Springs summer camp although Sloan has missing memories from that night what she does remember is a man in a screwed up Fawkes mask killing her peers and coming for her. Her mom is forcing her to see a hip note therapist named Beth to recall her missing memories that night has greatly affected Sloan say stop talking to her best friends prior to the event but will soon learn maybe those she is trusting now cannot be trusted. While helping her girlfriend cherry and her mom Magda moved to a new apartment in her town she open the box and sees a rabbit mask that is similar to the fox mesk she saw the night of the massacre. when she asked her girlfriend about it she says it’s too hurtful to talk about. Which totally flies in the face of their mantra never to keep secrets. Until now Sloan has been very codependent on Cherry, but she counters the inner strength to investigate and find out what is going on. Especially after the latest visit to Beth. There is so much more to this year thriller/horror and although I really was getting tired of Sloans inner dialogue the ultimate story was a really good one with Colts conspiracy theories back stabbers Sloan will learn to rely on herself and she will also find out those she thought we’re over her we’re really just waiting on her to depend on them. This was such a great book so much so I wish I could tell you the whole story because she’s also adopted and yeah there’s a whole story along with that this is a

90% of this book is just filler, it should have just been a short story. At least then it wouldn't have taken long to get to that horrible ending. The relationship is toxic and only exists because of trauma bonding.

great psychological thriller that i couldn't put down

thank you to netgalley and to the publisher for this review copy.

Was hoping for so much more with this book. The characters were annoying, the plot was fine but I didn't really care at all about what was happening to the people we followed throughout it at all.

DNF.

Thank you to PRH and NetGalley for an ARC.

This was not at all what I was expecting -- and I just couldn't get into it. The two main characters were annoying from the getgo, and I get it was supposed to be twisty psychological, but I couldn't get into it. I found the pacing unbearably slow for me.

I did end up skimming to the end to find out what happened and well. Hmm.

Sloan and Cherry are the only survivors of a brutal summer camp massacre, and only Cherry still remembers what happened that night. This book mostly deals with Sloan trying to remember what happened. Unfortunately we don’t get hardly any scenes showing the girls meeting at camp or anything that happened at camp leading up to or during the massacre, which I think would have been a nice addition to the story. The characters and “romance” fell pretty flat for me. Overall I just wasn’t invested in the story and I thought the ending was rushed and unsatisfactory.

Reading this after Dugan's adult romance debut was massive genre whiplash but I still had fun. I don't read horror really at all, so I am not the best person to say if this was a good horror, but I thought the concept of following the "final girls" after the events of the mass murder, was really interesting. I haven't seen that happen before but again, I don't really read horror. In general, I had fun, it was kinda predictable but I don't really see that as a bad thing, and I think the way it handled trauma and PTSD was very nuanced.

"In this queer YA psychological thriller from the author of Some Girls Do and Hot Dog Girl, the sole surviving counselors of a summer camp massacre search to uncover the truth of what happened that fateful night, but what they find out might just get them killed.

Sloan and Cherry. Cherry and Sloan. They met only a few days before masked men with machetes attacked the summer camp where they worked, a massacre that left the rest of their fellow counselors dead. Now, months later, the two are inseparable, their traumatic experience bonding them in ways no one else can understand.

But as new evidence comes to light and Sloan learns more about the motives behind the ritual killing that brought them together, she begins to suspect that her girlfriend may be more than just a survivor - she may actually have been a part of it. Cherry tries to reassure her, but Sloan only becomes more distraught. Is this gaslighting or reality? Is Cherry a victim or a perpetrator? Is Sloan confused, or is she seeing things clearly for the very first time? Against all odds, Sloan survived that hot summer night. But will she survive what comes next?"

Always here for the final girls!