BOOK REVIEW: The Last Girl by Joe Hart

2.5/5 Stars

Blurb:

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.

Review:

'The Last Girl' is set in the future, where some unknown development means girls stopped being born. Thus, the end of the world as we know it. No women means no procreation, and one organisation, NOA, is out to change this, whether the girls have a choice or not.

Zoey, 20, has been in the facility most of her life. The girls there don't have a surname, they're told when to eat, what to do, and once they're 21, they're taken away for what they think is to reunite with their parents. Zoey, however, doesn't always play to their rules, and it finds her in a world of trouble. Once Zoey finds the secrets of the organisation and breaks out, she must find a way to save the other girls, before it's too late.

I downloaded this book from Kindle Unlimited because the blurb had me intrigued. A world where girls stopped being born? How interesting. The beginning of the book I really liked. I loved the imaginings of this facility that had been created in an effort to save the population, and I felt for Zoey and the other girls. However, as time went on, my interest lowered.

I found myself really intrigued during parts of the book, but utterly bored with others. I think the action scenes of the book just weren't to my liking because of personal preference. That being said, I can imagine it making a good film. There were some other aspects of the book that made me question Zoey's female decisions and feelings, and then of course I realised the author was male. No disrespect, but sometimes it can just be quite telling. 

Overall, I didn't hate the book. I appreciated the story and the imagining behind it, but as a personal preference, I found myself quite bored during parts. I've since found out that it is a series, and unfortunately, I won't be reading the rest.