The Last Girls Standing by Jennifer Dugan

Review

Wow, this book was…I don’t think I can sum up this book in one word. I’m still struggling to tease out my feelings.

The summer before she starts college, Sloan gets a job at Camp Money Springs where she meets and quickly becomes involved with fellow counselor Cherry. They have one glorious week together, before a group of men in masks show up in the night. Sloan and Cherry are the only survivors. However, Sloan barely remembers anything of that night, let alone how the two survived. When she comes across something weird in Cherry’s house, Sloan begins to question what really happened that night and starts a search for answers.

That sounds like an amazing premise, right? It quickly sent this book to the top of my list and I devoured it once I started because I was desperate for answers. When I finally did reach the end, I was shocked at the twist. I went into this book with certain expectations so I thought I knew where it was going, but instead I was blindsided. Maybe some of that is because I expected this to end a certain way based on the premise. Thinking back there were definitely some details I ignored in search of the answer I expected to get.

However, it also doesn’t make a whole lot of sense because it felt like the ending came out of nowhere. Not to mention that so many “suspicious connections” are incredibly ambiguous. Cherry offers alternatives, but not all of them are believable given the circumstances. That’s also compounded by the fact that people keep hiding things from her. Even if it is in her best interest, it backfires and makes Sloan even more suspicious.

I had opened the ending would make everything else worth it, but it didn’t. It’s certainly shocking and against expectations.

Also Sloan & Cherry’s relationship, and frankly every relationship, just seems so toxic. Our main characters are incredibly co-dependent. Sloan can’t decide if she loves and trusts Cherry or if she thinks she’s out to get her (not to mention half the time she doesn’t think it’s a dealbreaker.) Whenever the two of them fight, they both brush it off and “distract” each other. Not to mention the depressing collage of their internet fame, Cherry’s tracking of Sloan, and both they it insistence that they are one entity.

If you want to read a novel that makes you question every detail you receive, and watch a traumatized survivor spiral into madness, then that’s what you’ll get with this book. The message that “sometimes horrible things have no reason and you have to accept that” falls flat (so far it always seems to.)