ARC REVIEW: The Last Girl – by Joe Hart

Title: The Last Girl
(The Dominion Trilogy #1)
Author: Joe Hart
Genre: YA, Dystopia, Science Fiction
First published: March 1st 2016
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Finished reading: August 9th 2016
Pages: 386

“There are prisons of all kinds, Zoey, they take every shape imaginable. They aren’t just concrete, and steel, and stone. They’re everywhere. And even when you’ve escaped one, there’s always another waiting. But you must remember that the first step to freedom doesn’t always start with picking a lock.” He reaches out and touches her temple. “It begins here.”

*** A copy of this book was kindly provided to me by Netgalley and Thomas & Mercer in exchange for an honest review. Thank you! ***

When I first heard about this book, I thought the blurb sounded really promising and I immediately decided to add it to my wishlist. And while I still think it was quite an interesting read, unfortunately The Last Girl by Joe Hart didn’t turn out to be as good as I thought it would be. I can’t exactly put my finger on the why, but it probably has to do with the fact that it was quite a slow read and the prose didn’t seem to grab my attention. It’s not like the story wasn’t well written or anything and I liked the worldbuilding and dystopian elements, but it kind of missed that little something that would turn it into something extraordinary. The same goes for the main character. Zoey is without doubt a very powerful female character with strong survival skills, but her character just sounded all too similar to other main characters of your typical YA dystopian story. Her character development in this first book is interesting, but the story in general doesn’t really add anything new to the genre or stands out from other books of the genre. The Last Girl is still an enjoyable story to read though… Especially since it’s one of the few YA dystopian books with almost no romance and not a sign of a love triangle. Definitely a miracle when it comes to the genre!

After a mysterious worldwide epidemic, the birthrate of female infants is almost down to zero. Nobody seems to know why this happened and how to solve this problem; medical science and goverments are at a loss to control the chaos as they try to figure out what to do. Twenty-five years later there is still no cure, and an entire generation grows up with fewer than a thousand women left on earth. Zoey and some of the surviving young women are housed in a scientific research compound and protected from the chaos and rebellion. They have been isolated from their families, treated as a test subjects and locked away. They don’t resist, since they have been told that the virus has wiped out the rest of the world’s population anyway. But Zoey suspects something is wrong. And even though captivity is the only thing she has ever known, she secretly dreams of being free… And that dream just might come true one day, although she probably doesn’t realize what consequences that freedom will bring.

I was really looking forward to The Last Girl, but unfortunately it didn’t turn out to be as good as I thought it would be. The story had a lot of potential and is still a pretty good read, but it showed a lot of similarities with other typical YA dystopian stories and didn’t quite stand out. I did really appreciate this story has almost no romance and NO love triangle, which was really refreshing after reading one too many YA series with this annoying trope.