The Last Girls Standing by Jennifer Dugan (review)

Reviewed by: The Last Girls Standing by Jennifer Dugan April Spisak Dugan, Jennifer The Last Girls Standing. Putnam, 2023 [320p] Trade ed. ISBN 9780593532072 $18.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9780593532089 $10.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 9-12 Sloan is barely hanging on after she is one of only two survivors of a brutal massacre at the summer camp where she was a counselor. Her absolute dependence on her girlfriend Cherry, the other survivor, is understandable, particularly because Sloan has no memories of the night herself. Cherry is there to tell Sloan what happened as many times as she needs to hear it, to comfort her, and to be a desperately needed romantic distraction from a life that now feels alternately empty of meaning and brimming with mysteries that need unpacking. The pace begins slow but accelerates as Sloan's tenuous web of support beyond Cherry fails to help her in any meaningful ways. She decides the only path to healing is to fully understand the reason for the massacre, flatly refusing to believe it was simply random, horrific violence and instead creating conspiracy theories with little evidence. Dugan ably balances Sloan's unprocessed trauma, her exhausted defiance, and her desire for unconditional love to make her a twisty and complex unreliable narrator—even she admits that everything she knows about the night when she almost died comes from media reports or her girlfriend. Her slow, inexorable creep toward the absolute wrong conclusions is painful to watch for readers, who will have as little ability to help her course correct as Cherry does, and a shocking tragedy feels inevitable given Sloan's determined, tortured fight toward something, anything, that feels like truth. Copyright © 2023 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois