Last One at the Party by Bethany Clift (sort of spoilers)

 

THE END OF EVERYTHING WAS HER BEGINNING

It's November 2023. The human race has been wiped out by the 6DM virus (Six Days Maximum - the longest you've got before your body destroys itself). The end of the world as we know it.

Yet someone is still alive. Alone in a new world of burning cities, rotting corpses and ravenous rats, one woman has survived. A woman who has spent her whole life compromising what she wants and hiding how she feels to meet other people's expectations. From her career to her relationships, to what she wears and where she lives, she's made a lifetime of decisions to fit what other people want her to be.

But with no one else left, who will she become now that she's completely alone?

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WARNING: as this is a novel about a severe plague and the months afterwards, there are several descriptions of bodies in various stages of decomposition.


Oh my god, that ending! Bethany has killed us with it. Not satisfied with killing practically the entire fictional human race, she is starting on the real human race too.

Ok, ok. Less hyperbole, more facts, right?

Fact: This book creeped me out so much I had to sit up for an hour watching Family Guy and playing colourful games on my tablet to calm down, and the whole time I was thinking 'when the power goes out I won't be able to do this any more.'

Fact: The writing style is fantastic, conversational and brilliant. I was a hundred pages in without feeling it at all. Although books that jump timelines don't always work for me, this one was great, perfectly judged to feel right.

Opinion: I think what really got to me in this one was the isolation. Most post apocalyptic books have groups of survivors coming together for good or bad. This one - does not have that. I'm an introvert, a pretty severe one, and I was still seriously contemplating getting up to check on my housemates just to make sure they were still there and I wasn't suddenly alone. It's so well written.

Fact: This book will put off a lot of people who won't be able to read it because of current circumstances. That's ok. Maybe they'll come back to it sometime. I did love the few little references to Covid mixed in early on, with everyone social distancing and and wearing masks.

Opinion: This is going to be one of this year's stunners. Fabulous. I would really love to read more set in this world, if Bethany was so inclined? ::looks hopeful::

Here is a sample quote that I can't stop thinking about:

It is time. I am clean and dry and warm and comfortable and tired and sad and lonely and done with surviving in this world on my own. 

I am not going to write some kind of dramatic final sentence or deathbed confession. I have done things I am not proud of and things that I would never have thought myself capable of –both good and bad. I hope someone finds this journal. 

And if you also find a shaggy golden retriever at the same time, he likes to be tickled behind his left ear, and his favourite food is biscuits. Tell him I love him and, if there is an afterlife, I will be missing him in it. 

If there is one message that I leave then it is this: I survived, but I never had a life. 

It is time.

Last One at the Party publishes on the 4th February, 2021