Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an e-ARC of Last Girls in exchange for an honest review!

Last Girls, for me, is one of those books where it's perfectly fine -- interesting concept (Doomsday Preppers?!@! Sign me up) & there's nothing wrong with the characters, but -- there was nothing that really gripped me. I doubt this book will be memorable, but in general, it was a pretty decent read.

I'm sorry this review isn't too helpful, I just don't have much of an opinion -- it was simply an average read for me.

This book was so much different than I thought it was going to be. I was NOT disappointed, just wasn't what I thought. I loved all three of the sisters, I loved the "holy hell" twist at the end, I loved reading about them having every day carry bags and bug out bags. Reading about other preppers is always fun. The writing was well done, the characters grew, and I felt so much emotions from this book.

There was much to enjoy here, but I found I couldn't connect with it. I'd read more from this author in the future though.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Tor Teen (Macmillan-Tor/Forge) for providing me with the digital ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A book about doomsday preppers? Count me in! I am a sucker for anything cult-like, especially ones that are focused on strong women. Brodsky does a great job developing the Juniper sisters and their unique voices and demonstrating the power of their sisterhood and how it is essential to their survival.

While the reveals were predictable to me, I enjoyed the writing style and I was invested in the characters, who at times functioned more as architypes for me which tied into the book's connection to the power of art and creativity.

I really enjoyed reading this book and it's a different take on the YA thriller genre that's been taking over recently. Definitely one to have on your radar and I can't wait to go back and read the author's debut novel.

Okay so I was really excited about this book. I love prepper/bunker books and thought this was going to be an apocalyptic type story. It was more of a school shooting conspiracy story. Not what I expected and not my favorite.

This was superb! 
This was a book I didn't know that I needed, and I enjoyed every single moment of it. This is one I feel like I need to reread again just to absorb and savour every moment of it.
This definitely won't be the last book from this author that I read.

A beautiful book on sisterhood and survival. This book does go into some tough topics that one may expect with cults, but I enjoyed the book and seeing how sisters Honey, Birdie and Blue Juniper navigated life as doomsday prepares

This was a pleasant surprise. I am not a fan of thrillers or big on contemporary stories, but the writing in this story gripped me from beginning to end. The atmosphere of the story was well written that I felt like I was with the girls. I loved the characters and how different they were from one another. Honey, Blue, and Birdie Juniper are all sisters that live on a compound in Washington state. They are doomsday preppers which means they are strange compared to others. I never felt like one sister flowed into another. They were all distinctly written with opposite and yet complimentary attitudes.

Demetra has a way with the writing that makes you visually picture each character and the setting. I felt like I was a doomsday prepper with the girls. This book didn't leave me empty. It filled me up and made me excited for more from the author. For someone who doesn't care much for thrillers I was excited to have stepped out and read this beauty. Definitely will be re-reading this in October!!

Ok, this was a genuinely weird reading experience for me.
What intrigued my about this book was the premise of sisterhood. It immediately screamed those girls against the world. I had never read anything about preppers, I've never met one nor had I ever really any interest in it. It always seemed really strange and inherently American to me. But I thought it might make for an interesting story.
I was kind of preparing for a post- or peri-apocalyptic scenario. But damn, I wasnt prepared for how boring this book would be.

Without exaggerating it I kind of wanted to dnf this book at about 10%. The writing style was so descriptive, but not in a good way. There was such a huge info-dump, in the very beginning. So many prepper terms that were abbreviated. Like Shit-Hits-The-Fan became SHTF and then you're just supposed to memorize all this unfamiliar terms. At some point my brain just skipped them entirely to be honest.

While I did like the stisters in general, they just felt so flat. Everything just felt weird to me and I was just not getting into this book. It's a wonder I made it to 50% without dnfing it (although I started to skip everything but the dialogue at some point). But then lo and behold, at about 60% in things started to actually happen.
From the beginning I was anticipating something big to happen, they weren't preppers for no reason right? Right? But up to 60% nothing legitimately happend. It was a constand to and fro. Sure there were a few, let's call them misterys, popping up here and there but they weren't really enough wo warrant a big story, you know?

I wish the first 60% were more like the last 40%. I even read the whole chapters and not just the dialogues anymore. Things finally started to fall into places, feel cohesive. I just wish the author wouldn't have waited until the ending to do that.

I will read anything that Demetra Brodsky writes and this didn't disappoint. I love that I learned something from this book. Brodsky did a great job of creating mystery throughout the whole entire book which made it hard to put down. I loved reading about these three sisters.

This one isn’t my usual type of read. One of my goals this year for reading (and in general) is to challenge myself, get out of my comfort zone. So when I saw the synopsis for Last Girls I was intrigued and decided to give it a shot. HOLY FORKING SHIRTBALLS GUYS!!!! I didn’t know what to expect from this book when I started it but it gave me one of the biggest roller coaster ride of the year. From the very first chapter, it grabbed my attention and kept me on the edge of my seat until the very end. Last Girls is the story of the Juniper sisters that live in a prepper compound. It is told in the POV of the eldest of three sisters, Honey Juniper. You will find a couple of chapters in between in another POV. I don’t want to spoil anything so I won’t talk about them except to tell you I really enjoyed them and thought they brought so much more to the book. Back to the sisters. Honey was an amazing character. Being the eldest she is always looking out for her siblings. No matter what happens she will always put their well-being first. As we read more about their story you start to see what brought this behaviour on and just how deep their bond is. Along with her sisters Blue and Birdie, Honey is the weird kid at her school. I mean living in a compound and prepping for doomsday will probably do the trick for that. But even if she seems to fully adhere to the prepper ways you could see the duality in Honey between maintaining the safety of the compound and her wish to fit in at school. Though the Juniper sisters are sometimes isolated in their own community not having been brought up there but coming in as outsiders. This was my first book and contact really with the prepper mentality. The way the community is explained it sounded almost more like a cult to me then anything. I guess it probably is in a way. I don’t know how close the book is to reality but oh my gosh my brain can’t wrap itself around some things. But Last Girls wasn’t just a book about preppers and when shit will hits the fan, for me it had also a lot of heart. The unconditional love that the sisters have for each other transpires through the story. It’s the kind of book that you didn’t expect to hit you in the feels but when it does you can’t help but love it so much more. It is so hard to talk about this book without giving anything away. There were so many twists and turns. Some of the twists I saw coming and some I didn’t but it didn’t matter if some parts were predictable because it was so captivating. If you liked books like The Serpent King and Scream All Night I think you will enjoy this one too. It was such a surprise for me but I am so happy I took the journey.

When I first read about Last Girls, I thought I’d hit the proverbial book jackpot; a story about sisterhood and doomsday preppers? Pinch me! 

But whilst this was a pretty solid story, it just didn’t do it for me. I’m not too sure what it was that didn’t click for me here, but I couldn’t care about it enough to make it a proper good read. The characters in Last Girls felt a bit too… different? As if the author was trying really, really hard to let you know that they’re Different and Special, and their Special Differences put them at such a distance from the reader that it felt difficult to connect.

I did enjoy some aspects of the story; I grew to really like Birdie, one of the sisters, and felt for her through the novel. Her two sisters, including the narrator, Honey, still felt too far-off, however. Birdie’s subplots were by far the most interesting, and arguably, the most resolved. Around a third of the way in, I realised that Demetra Brodsky was writing from the perspective of possibly the most boring character in the universe and that I would’ve enjoyed the book a lot more had it been told from a different perspective. 

In case you can’t tell, Birdie is what saved this story for me. Birdie, and the third act, which was jam-packed and could’ve benefited from being longer (and the first and second acts being shorter), but was still very redeemable.

Just a final note about how Last Girls, like a lot of YA contemporary at the minute, makes a lot of snide remarks about The State Of It All. Whilst I agree that the world is, in fact, in a complete and utter state at the minute, I feel like these references and (warranted) digs at, ahem, certain people in positions of power, unnecessarily date the book and bring me out of the characters’ reality. There’s a right and a wrong way for social commentary in fiction, and shoehorning it in is not the way to do it.

Last Girls was an okay read. If you’re into cults and doomsday preppers and LOUA (Lots of Unnecessary Acronyms), but not too bothered about three-dimensional characters, you might enjoy it more than I did.

Last Girls by Demetra Brodsky is about three sisters referred to as the Juniper Sister Weirdos. These sisters are Blue, Birdie, and Honey and they don't live the same life that you or I do. They live with doomsday folk that prepare for the worst on a compound in the Washington wilderness. People on the outside have no idea. Instead of living a life where they hang out with friends, these girls learn to hunt and live without technology. They are prepared to survive.

I thought this book was very interesting. It definitely brought something new to the YA community. I don't think we talk too much or even hear a lot about people that prep for the end of the world. This is definitely a book that is hard to put down because you want to know what happens next. That is also how most thrillers go. This book definitely takes you on a roller coaster.

his book really hits close to home, especially around this time with the pandemic going on right now. It's such an interesting premise of a book and there were definitely twists that I never saw coming.

We follow the Juniper sisters: Honey, Blue, and Birdie, who just about year or so moved to a compound for preppers in Washington with their mother. We start off with something happening at their high school and the aftermath of that.

We not only get the POV of Honey dealing with things going on with the compound and school. We also get a POV (which is distinct and shown by different type of pages and chapter titles.) A boy name Toby who's a street artist and his lives with his mother who was a famous painter.

I really loved ever character in here, including their dumb decisions that they made. Watching them grow as characters and changing their views on things.

This wasn't quite a five star read because I really didn't understand the point of the letters to Bucky and somethings being unrealistic and convenient for the girls.

This had me on the edge of my seat and had my heart racing through out; it was definitely a page turner. The ending was very sweet and put a smile on my face. Last Girls left me in a good book hangover, I'm looking forward to reading more from Demetra.

I wasn't sure what this book was going to be, but it turned out to be stranger than I thought. With a mix of literary references, ESP, political criticisms (including touching on BLM, quite self-aware) and survivalist themes, this book was really well-written. I didn't love every character. But I didn't have to. They were extremely flawed and screwed up, but painted so fully I could believe they were real people. In the end, this story about family and never giving up was actually quite sweet (like honey).

Last Girls is a novel idea breathed intensely into the YA genre. An unexpected narrative penned in Brodsky’s witty, matter-of-fact prose and executed with purpose, this story seeps into your bones like the cold rain of the Pacific North West and refuses to let go even after the last page.

It was so difficult for me to put this book down. Once you realize that things really aren’t adding up, you just have to know how it ends. This book was filled of twists and turns, love and loss, trust and friendship and terrible betrayal. I adored this book

This is a story with a really interesting premise and I enjoyed the speculative twist.

The way the two separate story lines tied together was really obvious and I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be. There were also parts of the story that were not well explained at all.

Overall a story with an interesting premise that lacked a little bit on the execution for me.

Three sisters are being raised in a doomsday coalition but not all is as it seems. I mean, in general the thought of a doomsday cult thing doesn't seem right to begin with but there is even more under the surface. Drugging, assault, murder and maybe even some abduction. This book is a plethora of events and I adored it.

Word of advice for when you read any of Demetra Brodsky's books, never take anything at face value. Her books are like onions, lots of layers.

As a side note, have you ever read a book where you spent nearly the entire time thinking that a character was a boy/girl only to have reality come crashing down right before the book ends when something happens to show that said character is really the opposite gender? No? Just me? Yup, I thought so. 
RATING
⭐⭐⭐⭐💫/5 stars

Trigger warnings: school lock-down/perceived attack on school grounds, commune living
Representation:

I have mixed feelings about this book and we are going to sort through them. But first, please stop comparing this to Wilder Girls. Yes - this is another female-cast, survivalist book. but that's all the similarities. While Last Girls has some merit, it is not the masterpiece Wilder Girls was.

Last Girls is the story of three sisters who live in a prepper commune. Their days revolve around school and preparing for the eventual end-of-days. I have seen a lot of reviews talk about this being a fast-paced book, however for me it really wasn't.

For a book that begins with a school lock-down, the first half of this book was incredibly slow in my opinion. It took me a while to get engaged enough to really want to continue.

Despite the issues with pacing, there were a lot of things that I really enjoyed in this book. I love how family-centered the entire story was. Not just with the main trio of sisters, but the way is was instilled throughout the entire plot.

I also really enjoyed the aspect of piecing together the two sides of the story. The books is broken into two main perspectives, one is the Juniper sisters, and the other is the seemingly unrelated Toby. Brodsky did incredibly well with how she slowly blended these two halves together.

The relationships between the characters were weaved really well, the sense of family was truly a highlight. However, when it came to the individual characters they lacked development and emotional connection with the reader. This, paired with the inconsistent pacing lowered my feelings for the book overall.

Y’all.

Y’ALL.

Y’ALL.

THIS BOOK. Holy smokes this book. This action packed, edge of my seat, wild thriller of a ride was exactly what I needed to read. I live for survival stories and this will now forever be in my Top 5 Favorites. Not only is this a survival story, it centers around Doomsday Preppers, a topic I have not ever read about in books (especially YA) before. I could not get enough of it. If these seem like your cup of tea, then I highly recommend this book to you.

While the main focus/topic of the story would appear to be TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It), there is so much more going on, something deeper and intensely important: family. Bear with me, I know it sounds cheesy but it’s true. The Juniper sisters, Blue, Birdie, and Honey, have a bond that defies reason. These three are so fluid with each other – they know what the others are thinking and automatically know what they are supposed to do. It’s like poetry in motion.

As if talking about doomsday prepping, EDC (Every Day Carry) bags, end of the world, and secret compounds isn’t enough, this story really holds so much suspense and mystery. There is more to the Juniper sisters besides their unwavering bond. There are dark secrets where these three are concerned, they just don’t realize it. What is it about their past that someone doesn’t want brought to light? The only way for you to find out is to read this book and join me in fangirling Brodsky’s powerhouse novel.