The Last Girl isn't my first choice
The Last Girl
By Joe Hart
Thomas & Mercer
Sci Fi, Mystery and Thrillers
Pub Date: March 1, 2016
Review
The Last Girl has an interesting premise. Women are scarce and no female babies have been born for almost a generation. Zoey is amongst a small number of young women kept in a fortress and told they are the only hope for the world.
Like most dystopian novels, the villains of this piece (the NOA) are the worst of the worst. The girls have scarcely any education, live a prisoner's life, and are placed in isolation where they are tortured in retaliation for any rule breaking. If that isn't enough, Hart throws in lecherous and abusive guards. To avoid falling into the YA category, Hart places the girls on the cusp of adulthood. They don't "graduate" until they are 21. In theory it's because the women are most fertile at 21, though the eggs are harvested and gestation is in tanks. Oh and to make the bad guys extra bad they kill the women who can't give birth to a female.
Zoe escapes after several brutal and violent confrontations. As you expect, she meets a group of allies that allow her to strike back at those who imprisoned her and rescue some of the others.
The writing was mediocre. At parts, particularly in the beginning it was awkward. It did improve as the novel progressed, but on the whole the novel dragged on far longer than it needed to.
Despite its flaws and numerous inconsistencies, I am certain fans of dystopian novels will enjoy The Last Girl. While it isn't a great novel, it gives audiences what they want - a sordid story, evil villains, and a girl who triumphs despite the odds.
3/5
I received a copy of The Last Girl from the publisher and netgalley.com in exchange for an honest review.
-- Crittermom
Description
A mysterious worldwide epidemic reduces the birthrate of female infants from 50 percent to less than 1 percent. Medical science and governments around the world scramble in an effort to solve the problem, but twenty-five years later there is no cure, and an entire generation grows up with a population of fewer than a thousand women.
Zoey and some of the surviving young women are housed in a scientific research compound dedicated to determining the cause. For two decades, she’s been isolated from her family, treated as a test subject, and locked away—told only that the virus has wiped out the rest of the world’s population.
Captivity is the only life Zoey has ever known, and escaping her heavily armed captors is no easy task, but she’s determined to leave before she is subjected to the next round of tests…a program that no other woman has ever returned from. Even if she’s successful, Zoey has no idea what she’ll encounter in the strange new world beyond the facility’s walls. Winning her freedom will take brutality she never imagined she possessed, as well as all her strength and cunning—but Zoey is ready for war.