I liked so many things about this book, but as I get older the less I am able to read books with toxic relationships. Allison was treated like a villain when she knew cherry was bad news and I’m too old to not side with the moms.

Thank you NetGalley Penguin Publishing Company, and Jennifer Dugan for giving me the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The book cover is incredible. This book is an ode to slasher films. I enjoyed reading this YA psychological thriller of a read that is LGBTQ+.

big thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Group for my first eARC!

as a horror movie fan, i have a special love for the final girl trope. and a YA slasher book with two lovesick girls being the only ones to make it out? i was so excited to read this!!

sloan and cherry both decided to work over the summer as camp councilors. just about as soon as they met, they were head over heels in love with each other. however, their sweet summer love turns sour when their camp is massacred by a cult of armed masked men. sloan and cherry end up being the only councilors to survive the night. this story follows the point of view sloan and her journey as she tries to uncover her repressed memories from this traumatic night. as more and more details about the cult and sloan’s memories get uncovered, sloan’s suspicions arise, and she finds she is not sure that she can completely trust cherry, the girl she was certain was her soulmate.

there were several things i enjoyed about this book. sloan’s inner monologue was pretty entertaining. she was written as a believable, angsty teenage girl, which i enjoyed. i also loved how this book incorporated the media’s role in modern day crimes and tragedies. i think social media and just media in general can tend to have many terrible, senseless takes on reported tragedies, and this in turn probably ends up adding on to the trauma of the victims. i appreciated that this book touched on sloan and cherry’s negative and downright ridiculous experience with the media’s impact on their lives post-tragedy.

that being said, there were some other things i didn’t quite care for with this book. this first one might just be a personal thing, but i wasn’t a fan of the abundant references to modern day things. imagine my surprise when i read “Swifties” and “mass murder”in the same book. additionally, despite the horribly tragic event that sloan went through, i found myself struggling to sympathize with her at some points in the story. i just wish sloan would have been developed more as a character. i really would have liked to learn more about her life and personality before cherry and the whole summer camp massacre thing, because in this story, it feels like the summer camp massacre and cherry are her ENTIRE personality. it just annoyed me a bit. also, sloan and cherry were supposed to be madly in love, but it was unconvincing. A they were just so toxic for each other that it frustrated me. lastly, i felt like the ending was kind of off. the whole story is spent with sloan trying desperately to understand the truth of what happened the night of the event, and by the end of the book it feels so close. but the final chapter was so shockingly unhinged that it felt like all that progress completely unraveled. we don’t get any real answers. i can see that this shocking ending might have been the entire point, but to me it just felt very out of character for the sloan that we saw in the rest of the story.

overall, this was a pretty easy read, but i was left kind of disappointed. i was entertained, though, so i’ll give it that. a solid three stars from me.

Free e-ARC provided by NetGalley
2.5 rounded up. I found this book to be pretty frustating- we follow two Final Girls- Sloan and Cherry- who survived the summer camp slashing, trauma bonded and are now dating. But the whole book is Sloan trying to figure out whether Cherry saved her or was really behind the whole thing. The book felt too slow and repetitive to me, and I understand that she's a teenager and she's been through trauma but Sloan's mood swings were just too much for me. The writing style was unremarkable and I don't know that I'd come back for another book by this author.

The cover of this book blew me away! I adore the premise and genuinely could not put it down. Sloan and Cherry were very captivating to read about., I personally enjoyed the pacing. The slower beginning held my attention and helped to build and build, right until the last second. However this is where the book fell apart for me. I was waiting and the tension could be cut with a knife. The ending of this book dulled the knife for me. It was deeply unsatisfying and maybe rushed? Overall I enjoyed this book, I just didn’t love the ending.

Loved this book! Definitely kept me interested from being to end, nothing that kept me bored at all. Definitely different from other reads loved the uniqueness of the plot!!!!

I read a eARC of The Last Girl Standing by Jennifer Dugan. Thank you, NetGalley and Penguin Group.

This is the type of Final Girl story that takes place after all the carnage appears to be over, and the final girl, or final girls in this case, are dealing with the aftermath. Our protagonist is Sloan, and Cherry is her girlfriend and fellow survivor. Sloan has gone through therapists and now only goes to a hypnotist because her adopted mother basically forces her to. Cherry and her have a sweet, but codependent relationship as they try to work through their trauma.

Sloan unfortunately finds her mind slowly unraveling. She blacked out during the attack on her camp. Cherry told her that she basically led her around while Sloan stared out into nothing while the bloodbath happened around them with people in animal masks. Because of this, when Sloan finds a box with a crudely made rabbit that looks like one of the masks of the people that attacked her. With her hypnotist, she starts remembering things slightly different than she had before she blacked out, and soon she’s left wondering who to trust, and if she really wants to know the truth of what happened that night or not.

The beginning of this book through discovering the box with the rabbit carving is really interesting. I like how Sloan’s and Cherry’s relationship is shown to be both very sweet, but also potentially dangerous with how much their starting to rely on each other. The way their parents react to their situations is also set up well to cause tension in different and interesting ways. And the breadcrumbs for where the story may lead is intriguing.

The problem is about halfway in, where it feels like the book has stalled out emotionally. While things continue to play out, Sloan herself just appears to constantly be in a constant loop with her emotions until the end of the book. It didn’t feel like a slow change, but like a sudden decision, she had reached because the book needed to end.

So, while I enjoyed a lot of the book, and thought a lot of potential was there for tension, the emotional growth mostly felt stunted or forced in certain areas. So, an alright final girl horror book, but not a great one.

"The Last Girls Standing" is a creepy good thriller. Sloan and Cherry met as counselors at summer camp and quickly formed a romantic connection. However, shortly after developing this connection, they would develop another bond they could never escape. They were the only survivors of a massacre that cost the lives of the camp director and other staff members, a total of eight people who were viciously murdered by individuals wearing animal masks. One of the murderers (the Fox) was captured, but the others killed themselves (suicide pact).

Sloan and Cherry are both struggling to cope with events that their family and friends cannot possibly understand. Their romantic connection has grown since the tragedy, and they now live in the same town, allowing them to see each other daily, much to the dismay of Sloan's mother, who believes that Cherry's presence is holding Sloan back from properly processing her trauma and moving on with her life. The challenge of coping with what happened to them is much harder for Sloan, who has blocked out the memories of the attack, and is relying on others, mostly Cherry, to fill in the blanks. Sloan's inability to remember what happened is particularly bothersome to her because she also suffered unknown trauma as a young child which resulted in her being placed in foster care and adopted, with no knowledge of the identity of her birth parents and only a few "tokens" of that former life. Not knowing her past but knowing that information is out there (especially as she found a redacted copy of her birth certificate) makes it difficult for Sloan to handle uncertainty and the perception that people are keeping secrets are from her.

The author does a great job of portraying Sloan's descent into paranoia as she learns new information about the attackers and their motives; discovers that her adoptive mother and Cherry have been keeping information from her; and finds things and/or overhears conversations, as well as "remembering" snippets of information from the night of the attack, that cause her to question whether Cherry or her family were somehow involved in the attack and whether Sloan's biological parents were somehow connected to the group. Sloan does not know who or what to trust, and this will have fatal ramifications.

This was pretty weird.

Sloan and Cherry met at summer camp. They knew each other for a short time before masked men showed up and started killing everyone. The man Sloan remembers was The Fox. Eight people were killed that night and Cherry and Sloan were the only survivors. Sloan remembers very little from that night. Her memories are basically what Cherry told her. The two have been together all the time since the murders. Cherry is very (over) protective of Sloan and doesn't want to be away from her. Sloan's adoptive mom made her see a type of therapist to see if she can remember and start to heal. Sloan starts seeing things a little differently, but it only confuses her more. When she is handed a book about the ritual killing that the murders were, she starts to wonder more about Cherry. And her birth parents. Sloan starts to think a lot of people might have been involved. All she wants is to remember everything from that night. She goes back and forth between trusting Cherry and not. She gets confused and her mind goes into the rituals and cult even more.

I gave this book 4 stars.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for my earc.

2.5 🌟

This unfortunately was so incredibly disappointing. I was really looking forward to this book. The premise sounded fantastic, I love the final girl trope. In the end this book just failed to deliver.

The nice thing is book is really short so if you are just looking for a quick spooky/slasher read it's perfect for that. However with how short this book is, the pacing was way off for me. We enter the story after the massacre and we are trying to piece together what Sloans real memory is. Thru ought we are questioning the true intentions of Cherry. The flashbacks we did get I just ended up not caring.

I do believe there is a book for everyone, this will find its audience just sadly it was not me.

Thank you so much to NetGalley, Penguin, and Putnam for this advanced reader copy. My review is voluntarily my own.

Both a tribute to and inversion of the "Final Girl" and "Summer Camp Slasher" tropes that wonderfully explores the mark trauma leaves on us. I loved the thrill ride this book took me on and appreciated the author's dedication to writing a narratively satisfying ending rather than a happy one.

The Last Girls Standing was a bit like a b-horror movie; not bad but definitely odd choices were made. The main character made some odd choices that kept kicking me out of the story. The ending I liked, but I don't feel the preceeding story made the ending a conclusion that tracked.

This book had every opportunity to be the book that I so wanted it to be. Sloan and Cherry survived masked killers as Summer Camp Counselors. Now, they're working through the survivors' guilt of being the last two left. Sloan has a harder time because her mind has shut out the memory. In search of her memory and the truth, we watch Sloan's rapid mental decline, which honestly just broke my heart.

An ode to final girls and slasher films. A rollercoaster from start to finish. A must read. I highly recommend.

The Last Girls Standing by Jennifer Dugan follows Sloan and Cherry, the only two survivors of a summer camp massacre. Bonded by trauma, these two characters rely on each other heavily in the months that follow the event. But when new evidence about the crime begins to surface, Sloan begins to wonder how truthful Cherry is being about what happened. Sloan begins her own investigation to try and recover her own memories about the night and decide what the truth is.

This had so many buzz words for me to be excited about. A queer slasher that takes place at a summer camp? Yes! But unfortunately, this book missed for me on almost all levels. Judging other early reviews, I don’t think I’m alone in seeing this trauma representation as very poor. This is a YA book but I could never recommend it to a teenage reader. The characters are also very bland. I never felt connected to either of them in any way. As a reader, I felt very distant.

Sloan is very wishy washy about her feelings about trusting Cherry. Which may have been compelling if it was mentioned once. But it’s an ongoing conversation throughout the entire book. I only read this book because I was curious about how it would end. But I found myself very underwhelmed by the ending because it didn’t seem to fit the narrative at all.

Truly very disappointed in this book as it was one of my most anticipated summer reads.

Summer camp massacre with queer leads? Yes please! The Last Girls Standing is Jennifer Dugan's take on the 80s slasher film, and is a great homage to the genre. Channeling Stefan, this story has everything. Murderers in creepy masks, trauma induced amnesia, final girls, cults...

Cherry and Sloan are the loan survivors of the Money Springs Camp massacre. A few days before the campers were set to arrive, men in masks came onto the campground and murdered all the counselors, except for the two of them who managed to hide until the police arrived. Or at least, that's what Cherry says happened. Sloan doesn't remember most of the night, her mind a blank slate. But Cherry has no reason to lie to her, right?

As Sloan learns more about the group behind the attack, and finds disturbing connections to her and Cherry's pasts, questions begin to arise. Was there more to that night than just random violence? Is she at the center of something more insidious? Or is this all in her head?

Jennifer Dugan is already the author of several YA queer romance novels. As her first foray into horror, The Last Girls Standing is a promising start.

I received this ARC courtesy of NetGalley.

This book sounded amazing which is what motivated me to request it, but unfortunately, it did not meet my expectations. Most of the book was honestly quite boring, and the ending was extremely rushed and just bad. You thought it was going to end one way but then it was something completely different and now that I am thinking about it, felt sort of out of character. Unfortunately, this was not for me.

I have some deeply mixed feelings about this book, and since I don’t know how to talk about my reading experience without discussing plot elements, this review is definitely going to contain vauge-ish spoilers.

I’ve read some of Jennifer Dugan’s other books, and this one was wildly different. The placing and themes were definitely those of a slow-burn thriller, and I liked that I was consistently gaslit by the narrator. Sloan’s progression through the novel was believable and incremental, and I liked that the ending didn’t play into some of the tropes that the rest of the book hinted at re: adoptive families, etc.

But.

The end also made me go, “WTF?” in part because of the loooooooong conversations trying to explain certain aspects of the story. And while I didn’t love all the stuff surrounding the cult of animal-masked murderers and rituals, I understand why Dugan included some of those things. Overall, I enjoyed the ideas, but not necessarily the execution.

That said, up until the ending, the books was a solid four stars for me. And I was literally sitting there at 93% percent white-knuckling it through the end and going, “What is real!?” As for the ending itself, I think it fumbled the landing, but I can’t deny that those last pages were powerful, and the final twist (?) was inevitable. I love this genre, and while this book left me not-quite-satisfied, it was certainly much closer to the mark than The Final Girl Support Group, which tackles similar ideas but with less nuance and subtlety.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. I’m leaving this review voluntarily.

The Last Girls Standing began with an enthralling first chapter. The book follows a queer teen couple, Sloan and Cherry. They survived a massacre at a summer camp shortly before opening for the season.

The plot thickens when it is discovered that the murders wearing animal masks are part of a cult. Sloan, whose memories of the night are foggy, begins to question what really happened that night. She turns toward paranoia.

The plot is promising and familiar with a unique spin. Sloan's paranoia left me questioning the truth of what really occurred that night. I found this ambiguous ending to be too ambiguous. There are too many unanswered questions for my taste.

Thank you, NetGalley, for this ARC of The Last Girls Standing.

Sloan and Cherry go to Camp Money Springs to be counselors after their senior year. They meet there and a romance quickly begins. Just days into their stay a massacre occurs and they are the only two that survive. Sloan goes off the deep end and trouble and mayhem arise.
This was a very creepy read that had me quickly flipping through the pages.
Thanks NetGalley and PENGUIN GROUP Penguin Young Readers Group for this ARC that will be released August 15, 2023!