DNF.

Thank you to PRH and NetGalley for an ARC.

This was not at all what I was expecting -- and I just couldn't get into it. The two main characters were annoying from the getgo, and I get it was supposed to be twisty psychological, but I couldn't get into it. I found the pacing unbearably slow for me.

I did end up skimming to the end to find out what happened and well. Hmm.

Sloan and Cherry are the only survivors of a brutal summer camp massacre, and only Cherry still remembers what happened that night. This book mostly deals with Sloan trying to remember what happened. Unfortunately we don’t get hardly any scenes showing the girls meeting at camp or anything that happened at camp leading up to or during the massacre, which I think would have been a nice addition to the story. The characters and “romance” fell pretty flat for me. Overall I just wasn’t invested in the story and I thought the ending was rushed and unsatisfactory.

Reading this after Dugan's adult romance debut was massive genre whiplash but I still had fun. I don't read horror really at all, so I am not the best person to say if this was a good horror, but I thought the concept of following the "final girls" after the events of the mass murder, was really interesting. I haven't seen that happen before but again, I don't really read horror. In general, I had fun, it was kinda predictable but I don't really see that as a bad thing, and I think the way it handled trauma and PTSD was very nuanced.

"In this queer YA psychological thriller from the author of Some Girls Do and Hot Dog Girl, the sole surviving counselors of a summer camp massacre search to uncover the truth of what happened that fateful night, but what they find out might just get them killed.

Sloan and Cherry. Cherry and Sloan. They met only a few days before masked men with machetes attacked the summer camp where they worked, a massacre that left the rest of their fellow counselors dead. Now, months later, the two are inseparable, their traumatic experience bonding them in ways no one else can understand.

But as new evidence comes to light and Sloan learns more about the motives behind the ritual killing that brought them together, she begins to suspect that her girlfriend may be more than just a survivor - she may actually have been a part of it. Cherry tries to reassure her, but Sloan only becomes more distraught. Is this gaslighting or reality? Is Cherry a victim or a perpetrator? Is Sloan confused, or is she seeing things clearly for the very first time? Against all odds, Sloan survived that hot summer night. But will she survive what comes next?"

Always here for the final girls!

YA have been delivering really good thrillers this year. I enjoyed this book a lot. I always appreciate when the characters don’t come off immature. The mystery was easy to piece together and the representation was good. Overall I think it’s a good summer read to stay entertained.

Omg Jennifer Dugan really did that!!!

I’d say the book as a whole is more 3 stars, but I had to round up for the ending and to help the overall rating. We don’t get nearly enough queer (especially sapphic) horror novels, and I would like Dugan to keep doing what she’s doing!

It’s wild that authors who normally write romance/contemporary are so good at thrillers/horror. Stephanie Perkins, Ashley Winstead and now Dugan are up there for me! (Though full disclosure I did not read Perkins’ or Winstead’s romance books, as romance is not my fave genre.) You definitely get Dugan’s classic romanticism between Cherry and Sloan, with a side of suspicion and secrets.

The story focuses on the trauma following a horrific event, as well as the strain on prior relationships it can have. Sloan and Cherry’s codependency was at times so maddening/nonsensical (and the way Cherry treated Sloan’s mom?? Omg) but that’s how it was supposed to be, because trauma does not make sense. I can’t say it was successful portrayal of PTSD or anything like that, as I don’t have experience there, but I will say Sloan’s anxiety was familiar to me.

I feel like the story was a little slow, and there was quite the repetition of Sloan suspecting Cherry—wait no it’s fine—actually she’s sketchy—well maybe she’s not… and I get how that played into the story as a whole, but I wish there had been more action/unraveling/layers. Something to give us an even better look into Sloan’s psyche. Because the ending (while glorious) was kind of abrupt.

Jennifer Dugan's debut YA thriller was unfortunately a miss for me. I wanted to love this one so much: sapphics! Summer camp! That cover! But the ending didn't have the payoff I was expecting, and the mystery took too long to get going.

I came into this book expecting something of a fun summer slasher, but that's not what this book is. Ever leave a horror movie thinking: okay, that was fun, but if this were real the Final Girl would be super messed up...how do you deal with surviving after?

Dugan deserves an immense amount of credit for crafting a narrative around a character who is suffering from a deteriorating mental state in the aftermath of trauma. Because Sloan is so unreliable, the reader is constantly torn between thinking she's jumping at shadows and suspecting she's being gaslit. It's a masterclass of character development that has the reader hanging on to the last page, desperate for the answers!

I wish the ending lived up to its promise.

Not because the answers are disappointing, but because so much is left unanswered. The story basically set up two outcomes: either Sloan was right to be suspicious, or sometimes trauma survivors have to come to grips with the idea that horrific things can happen to us for no reason.

Somehow, we ended up getting a worse, third path: repeating cycles of violence with no clarity as to the mysteries we were set up for.

As a reader, I was also left deeply troubled by the implications of telling a story about a deteriorating, repeatedly traumatized person that basically ends with her being destroyed by what happened to her and taking other people down with her. You don't always have to leave readers with a happy ending, but this one leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

I'd give this book 2.5 stars for the plot. I round up to 3 for Dugan's demonstrable skill in the craft of writing.

**spoiler alert** this book was compulsively readable and i flew through it! unfortunately i don't think it was ultimately for me—i'm a little worried that the way this book portrayed PTSD can perpetuate harmful stereotypes about mental illness and trauma victims. although i appreciated the central (toxic!) sapphic relationship, i thought this book was ramping up to a wildly different conclusion—but ending didn't sit very well with me. there's unreliable narrators, and then there are portrayals of unreliable narrators that feel harmful, and this struck me as the latter—still, though, i love dugan's voice in this, and i will likely pick up more books by her after this. in the end though, i couldn't quite look past the portrayal of PTSD and the unaddressed validation of toxic relationships and gaslighters in this one.

thank you to netgalley for providing me with a free ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Thank you to NetGalley, Penguin, and Jennifer Dugan for the advanced copy of The Last Girls Standing.

As a fan of horror, I’m a sucker for anything that has a summer camp theme to it, even in boom form, so I was excited to read Dugan’s The Last Girls Standing. And while I wasn’t disappointed, I wish there had been *more* to the story.

The book follows Sloan and Cherry, the only two survivors of a summer camp murder, as they’re trying to navigate their lives after the tragedy. Unfortunately, neither one of them is particularly likable as a character. Sloan was okay for me, but I couldn’t stand any time Cherry was on the page.

The romance to me felt weird as well, I would have LOVED to see more scenes of them at camp getting to know each other, but any scenes of the camp is scant, even though it’s the one thing Sloan thinks about constantly.

There’s not really much else to say about the book other than the writing style was fun in my opinion and I really liked it, but characters and plot felt lacking to me.

Overall if you’re looking for a quick read as a fan of horror movies/books I would for sure give it a try, it just wasn’t a favorite of mine.

Sloan and Cherry are the only survivors from a massacre at summer camp. Sloan has lost her memory, and is seeking to find out ‘why’. Cherry has become her love interest and is very overprotective of Sloan to the point of controlling. Now Sloan worries that Cherry may have secrets regarding her involvement in the horrible incident. No matter where Sloan goes it seems Cherry is tracking her and following her. Very intense, Some romance. And murder.

A solid thriller with a slow start. I would've preferred more slasher fun and maybe a deep dive into the massacre and all things culty, but I still had fun.

Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC!

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.