⭐️ 3
🌶️ 1/5
Age range: 16+
Content Warnings: cult pod vibes

Quotes:
- “Only for you. And I would come back a thousand more times. Even if it still meant everyone else died. Even if it meant I had to die. I will always, always come back for you.”
- If you need me to be the villain in your story, then I will, but I’m not going to apologize for doing everything I could to save you that night.”

Review:
Who doesn’t enjoy a cult sacrifice story here and there? We read about Sloan and Cherry the only survivors of a horrible murder at the camp they were both working at for the summer. Sloan has no memory of what actually happened that night and Cherry does but will only give her so much information thinking it’s for the best. The girls trauma bond and fall for each other and Cherry soon becomes the only thing that makes Sloan feel safe. But then she starts to remember things that make her question that whole horrible night and her biological parents possibly having something to do with the cult/pod that murdered their friends. But is her girlfriend part of all this as well and is Sloan the next to be murdered? Good read and left you feeling a little creeped out just like any cult story should.

Tropes & Vibes:
- LGBTQ+
- Murder mystery

Chilling twist!
Two survivors of a murder spree, 18yo Sloan and 18yo Cherry were the only ones left alive after a group of masked killers arrived in the summer camp where they worked and ended everyone’s lives except those of the two young women. Sloan leans heavily on Cherry to keep her afloat but when possible secrets come to light, Sloan feels the need to find the truth about the reasons behind the murders on her own. She reaches out to the sister of the lead killer, the only other person alive after the murders. She reaches out to the imprisoned killer himself too. What Sloan discovers is beyond her comprehension.

Likes/dislikes: I like the complexity of the cult guilty of the crimes and their backstory. The story has a good twist. I enjoyed the author’s writing in portraying feelings of betrayal and manipulation by others.
Language: R for 97 swears and 71 f-words.
Mature content: PG-13 for implied sex and underage drinking.
Violence: R for bloody deaths.
Ethnicity: Rahul is Indian. Beckett , Kevin, Sloan, Dahlia and Anise are white. Cherry has peach skin. Hannah is Korean American. Shane and Ronnie are Black. Connor has brown skin.

This was one of my most anticipated reads in a long time, and unfortunately I was left disappointed with this one. I thought it was going to be a slasher, or a thriller and really, it was neither. This book takes place after the slashery murdery bits, and nothing happens. At all. 300 pages of boring, uneventful nothing. It picks up right at the end and it does get a bit crazy, but it was too little too late.

I am honestly having a hard time reviewing this book. There was a lot to like, including the premise and the way the confusion matched the confusion of the main character. But I still found the story to just be a bit frustrating, mostly because that same premise of being set after a mass killing didn’t leave me feeling like there were a ton of stakes for the story and made the big twist at the end fairly predictable. I also wasn’t a huge fan of the characters which made this difficult for me.

Thank you to the publisher for allowing me to read this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review

DNF @ 27%

I couldn’t stand the relationship between Cherry and Sloan and was bored by the whole thing. I was too annoyed with the characters to pay attention to the storyline or care

Thank you Penguin for this ARC
A sapphic horror novel that depicts trauma in one of the worst lights I've ever seen in a book, with a depressing end message.
Sloan and Cherry are the lone survivors of a summer camp massacre. Deeply traumatized they find solace in each other, but Sloan has holes in her memories, and begins to question what really happened.
I honestly have no idea what I just read. And not in a "wow that was so fantastic and different, but in a I had no idea where any of this story was going".
I do think the premise is interesting, as well as the writing. Just like Sloan, I felt completely lost and unsure of who to trust. There are a lot of great tense moments, and so much gaslighting. I was ready to point fingers at literally everyone in this book.
I don't know Dugan's background, I don't know if she has experienced trauma and CPTSD such as Sloan has. I'm not sure if writing this in a way was cathartic for her. For me someone who suffers from CPTSD, I found this book to be an inaccurate and quite frankly offensive depiction of trauma. There is so much wrong in how this book depicts what it is like to go through trauma therapy, and how the characters react to trauma. (view spoiler)
I do think the ambiguous ending hurt the book, and just further leaned into the "you won't heal from trauma" stereotype.
If you decide to read this, please check your triggers/content warnings.
Personally I didn't have a good time reading this, and wouldn't personally recommend it.

Sloan and Cherry had only new each other a few days before several masked men tore through the summer camp they were working at and killed all the counselors. Now months later you can't separate the two of them. Sloan wants to know what really happened and begins to try and figure out why them. She soon begins to think that Cherry might have and something to do with what happened. As more and more comes to light the paranoia sets in and Sloan can't tell who's the bad guys are. Follow along to see if Sloan survives the journey from that fateful night or will she go insane from all the unanswered questions.

I thought The Last Girls Standing had all the right things to make a really good story. While there were parts I did enjoy, I felt like overall the book was a little lackluster. At the beginning of the book I was so invested in finding out what happened to Sloan and Cherry the night their lives changed, but by the middle of the book, I struggled to keep interest. There were many times that felt like an important moment was about to be revealed and it would shake up the story only for it to fizzle out abruptly. It was rather frustrating when everything else in the book felt like it was just the same thing repeated.

It didn't work for me.

I'm loving the jump back into the horror/slasher movie genre in YA fiction lately and this book was a great example of that.

I came for the thriller of it all and I stayed for the characters (good queer/LGBTQ+ rep) & and the 80s/90s slasher nostalgia. Even though the book had a bit of a slow start, and I usually prefer to be dropped into the action, once it started getting into the characters more I became hooked and loved every minute of it.

I'm really excited to see more thrillers from this author in the future! :)

Thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for this ARC to review.

Awesome book characters and phycological horror plot line. Will definitely be reading again as an audio boook

Thank you to Netgalley and PENGUIN for the e-arc for the copy of this book. I really wanted to love this book especially during spooky season but this book was meh for me. I wanted more and it never came.

This story was a little bit wild, even for a thriller. There were definitely moments that I loved and thought were great, but there were a lot of moments that I feel like were left behind as huge plot holes. This book required a suspension of disbelief beyond what I was planning. There was a lot of WTF moments, but overall I enjoyed the thrill.

I didn't enjoy this as much as the rest of Dugan's works. It definitely took me places I didn't expect, but it felt unfulfilling and like the payoff for some great moments wasn't there for me.

I really wanted to love this book, it sounded so good from the summary. Sadly I just couldn’t seem to get into. I found it a chore to continue to pick back up so I ended up DNFing it. The main character also really got on my nerves, so that made it really hard to get into as well.

I enjoyed this book!!! I though this book was wild ride and i loved the twist and turns this book was the defination of unlikable characters but the plot kept me reading and so many twists and turns. I enjoyed the lgbt+ rep in this book,i struggled a little bit with the ending but def a quick read!!

This book was okay for me. I like the idea behind it, but it honestly felt like I was reading Final Girls by Riley Sager again. I gave it three stars. It was too predictable and didn’t really hold my focus.

This was my first read from Jennifer Dugan, but it certainly won't be the last! This novel is the campy, sapphic, semi-horror that I wish I had in high school. I thoroughly enjoyed The Last Girls Standing. I wish there had been more action or the novel's timeline had been expanded to include the massacre. I also would have classed this as middle grade or teen rather than YA, as the plot was straightforward, and it lacked the maturity of YA. The character interaction studies and world-building details were the strong points in this novel. I also love that this book gaslit me.

I wanted to really love this book! I didn't think it met up to the mark but I was able to finish it fairly quickly. I appreciate the opportunity to review this story.

The Last Girls Standing
2.5/5
Disclaimer: I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Thank you Penguin and Netgalley!

I think my younger self would have eaten this up, but unfortunately my adult self…Not so much.

I’m a sucker for a slasher but this one fell a bit flat for me. It missed out on all the fun summer campiness and I sadly found it to be a bit slow and boring.

That being said I think I would have liked this book much more if I had gone in with different expectations. While I was expecting a goofy teen slasher, this book more so tells the traumatic after story of said slasher.

I love Jennifer Dugan and I hope she writes other thrillers in the future as I believe they will only improve from here.

I can't quite get a grasp on Jennifer Dugan and it's confusing me. Dugan's graphic novel, Coven, is literally one of my favorite graphic novels ever. I enjoyed Melt With You, and hated Some Girls Do. I never know what I'm going to get with a Jennifer Dugan novel. That said, I wasn't a big fan of this one. Not because it was inherently, but it didn't have me guessing and at the edge of my seat like a lot of thrillers typically do. I found the story to be kind of predictable, so I kept guessing there'd be this huge twist that would make all the focus on the little obvious details make more sense, but that just never happened. I also think that just...not a lot happens in this for a thriller? There have been some huge thrillers to come out this year and I just don't think this one stacks up to the truly phenomenal ones that have come out. I think there's some decent things in this, but ultimately I just couldn't get into it!