This book was pretty good
I loved the idea behind it, the characters were so well done. Can't wait to read more by this author

This was a fairly quick read at least for me and while I don't have a lot to say about it, only because I didn't relate to any of it. For me it was a purely entertainment book

This is a case where I liked the concept better than the execution. THere's nothing terrible about the book with which we are presented. The plot follows an internal logic without any glaring leaps or deviations. Its failing is in depth. As in, the lack of. Its a very surface exploration.

Li has a father and a sister who love her. A best friend, Mirabae, to share things with. She goes to school and hangs out at the beach and carefully follows the rules. She has to. Everyone she knows--her family, her teachers, her friends--is an alien. And she is the only human left on Earth.
Enjoyable book with a nice romance and aliens!

This is a very short book that I struggled to get even half way through. Nothing felt unique or interesting.

I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I love when books remind me of previous books. I think I read somewhere among all of the reviews for The Last Girl on Earth about it feeling sort of like the 5th wave - and I totally agree. Which is probably why I loved it so much.

The beginning got me instantly hooked and I wanted to know why these characters had freaking gills! I really liked all of the characters with in this book but I guess I was sort of wanting more. Yeah, this book definitely left me wanting more. More action. More likable characters. Just more.

Li, the MC, is the LAST human on earth. However, the girl has gills - again, this piqued my interest. However, while reading what happened to earth and the rest of the humans, I feel like some stuff was left out. Or just glossed over and that's probably why I was expecting more from this book. I wanted things explained in more detail but I didn't want a huge info dump.

Yes, this book had flaws but it was still enjoyable. It definitely held my interest the entire time and I am totally looking forward to my next book by Alexandra.

It's a pretty quick read - I think I destroyed this book within an hour? Maybe less? Maybe more? Little do you all know, I don't time myself while I'm reading a book.

Fairly early on while reading this book, I began to ask what the point was of having aliens who do everything like modern humans? Minor differences - they 'beam' messages rather than text them or the vehicles run a bit cleaner - hardly a new race make. Especially since the premise of the book was that this race obliterated the humans for being inferior. But honestly, that was a drop in the bucket to the issues plaguing The Last Girl On Earth - a complete and utter lack of world building, facile plot machinations exacerbating cliche characterizations, and a ploddingly mundane and boring story means this is a problematic read.

Story: Li, a human, lives secretly among the Abdalorans who genocided the humans for the sake of the planet and then resettled it themselves. There are only minor differences between the two races, most notably the Abdolorans are sturdier and have gills. If she is found out, her family and Li will likely be executed for treason. But then she meets cute hunky guy in sexy jeans and decides to start telling everyone she's human. Cue bad boy rival who is jealous of her and finds out her secret.

It feels like very lazy writing to have the aliens be exactly the same as 2018 humans except with gills (and why gills? It's never explained). They have a drug like alcohol so we can have drunken drama points, they have rivalries, parties, schools, houses, everything else just like humans. So it is hard to reconcile a) why the humans were so inferior and b) why this exact same lifestyle isn't also killing the planet. It's not that the aliens were mimicking humans - they live like that on all planets.

The plot and characters operate on such a simple level as to be almost childlike. It's hard to read our main character happily confessing to everyone that she's human knowing that doing so risks not only her life but also her father and sister - who sacrificed everything to harbor her. But of course, dad just pats her on the head when she says that she can't hide any more, she has to live her life. Argh! The father character was honestly a joke - the perfect father figure resembling no actual person on the planet. Let's not get into Li's sister and 'friends'.

The whole plot was a retread of every YA story you've come across this year: unique snowflake, cute boy who instaluvs her, rival in power who tries to kill her, and then pat resolution so unlikely as to be insulting. Because this is so simply written and not much happens, it is a quick read - 2 hours at most. But none of the promise of the blurb materialized at any point in the book. This is just a typical YA contemporary with some random alien trappings thrown in to make it seem original. Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher.

I was not a fan of this book. It focuses more on a buddy romance and less on sci-fi. Would be a great read if you are looking for a love story but not an action packed sci-fi.

I really enjoyed this new young adult book. I found myself absorbed by the characters and the storyline.

This was a short read, so that was good. I felt the World was interesting, but I didn’t care much for the characters. The ending seemed a bit rushed.

Delacorte Press and NetGalley provided me with an electronic copy of The Last Girl on Earth. I was under no obligation to review this book and my opinion is freely given.

Li and her best friend Mirabae are awaiting the start of the assessments, used to determine what position they will be given at the start of their seven years of service for the Abdolorean Armed Forces. Having to be the best is nothing new for Li, who is hiding a big secret. Her father, a scientist from Abdolora, was part of the contingent trying to help the humans on Earth survive. Li is actually human, having been saved from certain death by her father when he took her back to his home world. Now hiding in plain sight, it is imperative that Li become an officer so that her origins are not discovered. When Ryn moves to town just prior to the assessment, Li struggles to keep her eyes firmly on her career. Will Li put her future in jeopardy for the sake of her heart's desire?

This YA science fiction/romance was a decent read until the ending, which totally ruined the book. The science fiction aspects of the book are quickly overshadowed by the romance ones, cheapening the story to a large extent. The ending seems to be just thrown together, as though the author had an outline with plot points and wanted the book to go a certain way. I would be hesitate to recommend The Last Girl on Earth to science fiction readers, as I feel that they would be less than impressed with the outcome. YA romance readers may fare better, but there are many more books in this genre that may be to their liking.

Couldn't put it down. I read this in a day. The only real complaint I have is that the world building was not very good! It had a good plot and characters. I voluntarily read and reviewed an Advanced Reader Copy of this book from Netgalley.

This was a book I REALLY wanted to like. I loved the concept of the novel and how unique all the ideas were in this novel. The author truly has an incredible imagination and I applaud her creativity!

One of the main problems I had with this book was the world building. I felt like there were a lot of plot holes and not enough elaboration on how this worked in this world. It all seemed rushed and unexplained.

The characters in this book were fine, but not very memorable at all.

I also was not a fan of the romance in this novel. The romance was the perfect example of insta-love. I did not feel or understand the connection between the characters. I will admit that there were some cute moments between the characters, but as a whole, the romance did not work for me. The other relationships in this book were also underdeveloped. I would have loved to see the friendships in this story develop more than they did.

I am sad that I did not enjoy this book! If this sounds like a book that intrigues you, you might want to try it for yourself and form your own opinion! However, this book was just not for me.

2 / 5 Fangs

*This ebook was given to me in exchange for an honest review. *

The Last Girl on Earth by Alexandra Blogier is a young adult science fiction fantasy that was heavy on the romance and light on the science fiction/fantasy. Now despite my low rating there were moments that I would start to like this one but in the end I just had too many questions and concerns with the world building to rate higher.

The story centers around Li who is a human teenager that is the only human that survived when Abdoloreans came to Earth and wiped out the rest. She was given to an Abdolorean male to raise alongside his daughter. Now the Abdoloreans basically look the same as humans with the exception of gills in which Li has been given fake ones leading to my first question I pondered, how do you cut open a human and give them gills? Now maybe some plastic surgery or something but all he doctors are gone…..

So anyway as the story starts Li has had her best friend all her life but she doesn’t know Li is actually human, only her Abdolorean father and sister know. But we constantly learn all the things Abdoloreans are better at so Li has been training all her life secretly to pass as one. Again leading me to all kinds of questions with the vagueness of this set up so far.

Then we entered into learning Li is also training for the Abdolorean’s army and about to have her testing when amazing a cute boy enters and Li starts throwing all caution to the wind due to cute boy so yes, insert insta-love. But here I am again thinking why oh why is all of this happening if Li’s race is so top secret? And I won’t mention how the little we get about why humans were so horrible and needed to be destroyed by these aliens just seemed rather silly (having cows is terrible???) since it’s never really fully explained and just brushed over anyway.

So it seemed the entire time I’m reading this book I just had question and question popping into my head on the how’s and why’s which is rather distracting while trying to enjoy a book. But through all that I thought that maybe, just maybe this one would end at a 3 star for me until we get the the final chapters. Now I won’t give any spoilers but let’s just say I walked away shaking my head still with those incessant questions running through my mind so I suppose this one just wasn’t my cup of tea unfortunately.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

The blurb for this book caught my attention right away. I thought that it was an interesting take on a person caught behind enemy lines. It made me curious about what Li's life would be like and how she would manage to hide amongst aliens for so long without raising suspicion. I also thought that the cover was a nice touch. I liked how prominent the stars on the cover were and how small Li was to denote how small she is in comparison to the aliens she is hiding from and the size of the universe as a whole.

I thought that the book started off well enough with Li describing what the earth looks like in the aftermath of the extinction of the human race and the aliens taking over the planet. Her point of view grew tiresome after a while because she didn't seem to think, act, or talk much like a human. I wanted to be able to see a distinction in her head as to how different she was from the aliens. I enjoyed the points in the story when her father is training her because she seemed more human. I thought that it was clever of the author to have included this as well as the explanation as to how she was able to blend in physically with aliens.

I feel like this story was more of a romance with SciFi blended into it. I would have liked for it to be more about Li and her ability to blend and survive. I appreciated the fact that the author didn't do the typical route with a book like this but I could have done without the romance. I also thought that the romance was rushed. It seemed like insta-love to me because Ryn sees her, wants to be with her all the time, and then before you know it they are announcing their love for each other.

I would have liked more world building. I feel like I was thrown into a world that I didn't fully understand. I didn't know how the alien society worked, why Li wanted the job that she did, and why the aliens wanted to settle on Earth in the first place. The author came up with such an interesting idea and I wanted to know more about the world that I found myself in.

Sixteen-year-old Li is the last human on Earth. Saved as a baby by a human-sympathizer and raised as his own child, she is constantly aware of what makes her different from the Abdoloreans who took over the planet and wiped out her species - and how hard she has to work to keep her secret. With placement assessment for the upcoming mandatory military conscription looming, Li can't afford to lose focus if she hopes to place as an officer, the only rank that doesn't risk exposing her true identity. But when she meets Ryn, the captivating new boy in her class, her whole world threatens to fall apart.

As YA goes, it's fascinating to see the format tackle post-colonialism. The Abdoloreans are serial colonists; the seven year mandatory military conscription is centred around setting up new colonization initiatives or putting down the resistances to the current ones; they're constantly fighting the indigenous populations of various planets. I would have liked to learn more about why the Abdoloreans are engaging in this initiative so intensely: is it a form of manifest destiny? A righteous need to police all the populations of the universe? Are they fleeing their own ruined planet to colonize others? Or are they just parasites and this is what they're driven to do? Their motives for eliminating the humans is that humans didn't deserve to live on a planet that they were actively destroying, but their motives for traveling to Earth in the first place are less clear.

The theme of environmentalism is also present. The humans were deemed unworthy of the planet due to their abuse and neglect of the environment, yet the Abdoloreans’ response was to kill the inhabitants (including most of the animal life) with radiation. Even some of their own settlers died, in the early years of post-human colonization, of radiation poisoning. The hypocrisy seems lost on them and the narrative they maintain of their history on this planet. This threatens to chip away at any message the book may have had about the importance of environmental stewardship, especially with how Utopian the current Abdolorean world seems to be, with their high levels of technology and beautiful beach-front landscape.

Li is able to hide among an alien species because Abdoloreans are almost identical to humans, except for greater physical strength, better resilience to disease and injury, higher mental acuity, and gills. Its a bit of a stretch, but the idea of a universe populated by humanoid creatures is a suspension of disbelief we've all been maintaining for the history of the sci-fi genre so I'll give it a pass. However, in many ways it's hard to see much of a difference between Abdolorean culture and our own. They wear pants, dresses, and shoes. They live in slightly higher technology versions of human houses. They go shopping at a downtown shopping centre. They have prom. I even noticed the characters using words and terms that etymologically would have no place in a non-human culture. The only thing that really made the Abdoloreans “other” was Li constantly telling the reader that they are. I feel there was a missed opportunity to create a really distinct culture. Instead, all the teenaged characters just act like, well, American teenagers.

Verdict
Check it out! The Last Girl on Earth is an interesting premise with some enjoyable, relatable characters, a good plot, and a sweet, if predictable, romance. I wish more detail had been put into the world building, but the end is set up for a sequel, so there's always hope that the next book will fill in more of those details and that it will dive deeper into the post-colonial themes.

"Li has a father and a sister who love her. A best friend, Mirabae, to share things with. She goes to school and hangs out at the beach and carefully follows the rules. She has to. Everyone she knows--her family, her teachers, her friends--is an alien. And she is the only human left on Earth."

Alright, I admit it. I judge books by their covers. I totally do. I'm going to guess most of you do, too. It's okay, really. Here's the things about book covers: they help us to mentally categorize books in our head. We all know a fantasy book from a mile away, even if that's not a genre we're familiar with, based solely on the cover. Almost 90% of the time. Sometimes publishers even use this to their advantage. When I was in college, right after Twilight became the sensation it was, some publisher recovered classic novels like Pride and Prejudice to looks just like Twilight. And it worked because we all judge books by their covers.

The first thing that caught my attention about The Last Girl on Earth by Alexandra Blogier was, in fact, the cover. The colors caught my attention; the juxtaposition of space and sea. The lonely girl on the edge of the water. It seemed so solitary. I used the cover to draw my own inferences about the book. I imagined something post-apocalyptic, a girl on the fringes of society. I imagined solitude and a person vs. nature kind of conflict.

The I read the description (see above) and I found that some of my inferences were correct and some were not. I decided to request a galley for this book in an attempt to read more YA Science Fiction, a genre that I tend to avoid for whatever reason.

A little bit of back story:

Sixteen years before the opening of The Last Girl on Earth, Earth has been invaded by the Abdoloreans and have destroyed the Human Race. They've studied them for research purposes and have eradicated humans as we know them. Li, the protagonist, however, is the last remaining human being. The man who raised her, the man she calls father, rescued her as the race crumbled.

The Abdoloreans are roughly humanoid, which makes it slightly easier for Li to blend in. Unfortunately for Li, however, the Abdoloreans are superior in many ways. They're stronger, faster, smarter than the human race. They also have gills, but Li's father has found a way to work around that.

The Abdoloreans are a little bit like Israel in that every citizen is conscripted for military service when they come of age. The bulk of their education is focused on training them for service in their armed forces. And the bulk of Li's life has been preparing to make officer in the forces in an attempt to hide her secret.

Into my review:

This book was short, for starters. It was like a two-and-a-half-hour read. Not that I'm opposed to short books, but they don't leave a lot of room for exposition and world building. Short books force the author to be a master crafter, weaving back story into the storyline as the action is happening. Unfortunately, in the case of The Last Girl on Earth there were more questions than answers in the world building.

It seemed as though The Last Girl on Earth relied on a lot of tropes in science fiction. Earth's invaded. One survivor. Hides in the open. Chink in the armor is shown very early. Badass girl is taken down by love for a guy. It's all very basic and very contrived.

That's not to say it was bad. This book wasn't bad. It just wasn't my favorite. The writing left a lot to be desired. The story was fast-paced, however, and kept my attention. I am a notorious book abandoner, and I didn't abandon it. That's proof positive that it was not a bad book. It just wasn't my cup of tea.

The characters had body and depth. They weren't very complex. They weren't very colorful. But they existed. They were believable. They were perfectly adequate. The story was perfectly adequate.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for sending me a digital ARC of The Last Girl on Earth
by Alexandra Blogier. This book has an interesting premise but I did not find the story itself very interesting. The book took a plot we have heard before and added something new to the canon but I did not feel that it worked. It was just a bit too far-fetched for me.

I definitely went into this with 5th Wave feelings and I got a strong heroine and ROMANCE. Part of me is of two reviews.

The first review is that if I analyze this simply from the book description then its a 3 out of 5 stars. Because I expected more fear, more training, more angst about Li being the last human! Truly this book could have been exceptional if the romance took a back seat. There was a lot of good things brought up (humans are inherently evil???) but there wasn't as much sci-fi as the description led me to believe. It would have also benefited the story to see the Abdoloreans act less like humans with gills that were physically stronger. Also gills? How is it scientifically possible for them to function on earth with gills and why is this not explained? This story would have been stronger with those questions answered, possibly during a training sequence that was missing?

The second review is that if I look at this under a different description where this was the last human questioning whether its possible to fall in love with the aliens that obliterated her species? Maybe 4 stars if it also answered all the moral questions Li would have asked herself in this scenario. Ryn still could have been the cute romantic interest in this imagined story line, which of course could have been made more dramatic if his father was one of the Abdolorean's pushing to obliterate all the humans. DDDDDRRRRRAAAAMMMMAAAAA.

However this book tried to take from both of those ideas and didn't fully deliver on either of them. With that in mind I find myself only able to recommend this to people who want a quick romance novel with a dash of scifi.

My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me read an early copy in exchange for an honest review.

I really liked this book, even though it wasn’t what I was expecting. It is a wonderful story about family, trust and friendship with a nice romance and some aliens thrown in to make it interesting. Except for the aliens and the futuristic setting it reads more like a contemporary, but that is ok.

I enjoyed Li and her family. It was nice to read a book with such a solid family, no major drama unfolding between them. Li was adopted by her father and raised as one of them. This meant a lot of training to be something better than human. The Abdoloreans, look like humans, but are smarter and stronger. Li understands that she has to try her hardest to blend in, because if she is caught her father and sister will also be punished for harboring her. The scenes between Li her sister and father were some of my favorites. I also adored her relationship with Mirabae, which even when they were having issues, they struggled through to a stronger bond.

The romance with Ryn developed in typical YA fashion. I liked Ryn, I thought he was maybe a little too good for Li, but they were cute together. There was an instant attraction to each other, which I am ok with, but the romance may have evolved a little too quickly. But there were time constraints, both in the length of the book and in the fact that they were in training to be in the army and sent off planet. They knew from the start that they would be separated eventually, so that would speed things up a bit.

It is never fully explained why the Abdoloreans annihilated the humans, but I think that is because it was never fully told to Li, she was only told that it was because they were violent and destroying the Earth. You do very much get the feeling that the Abdoloreans are control freaks and want to remold the galaxy to be just like them, because they are the superior species and therefore know better. As a whole I didn’t like them very much, but I liked Li’s friends for the most part.

The recreated Earth sounded like paradise, except that there were no more animals for the most part. I think they were destroyed with the humans. But being able to go out into the backyard and pick fruits and vegetables and to live so close to the ocean, sounds amazing and wonderful.

The overall plot of the story was well done, but I would have liked a better explanation as to why they destroyed the humans and if there was a way for Abdoloreans to tell that Li was human. There were hints that if she was seriously injured it would be bad, but not really explained why. I thought it was because the Abdoloreans couldn’t be hurt, but given the ending of the book, that wasn’t it. I am really hoping that there will be a sequel, and that some of these questions will be answered.