Gain Your Copy The Last One Formulated By Alexandra Oliva Offered As Paper Copy

a toss up, but I'm leaning closer tofor this,

There were contingency plans in place, but not for this, It's a spiral like that child's toy: a pen on paper, guided by plastic, A pattern, then something slips and madness, Incompetency and panic collide. Good intentions give way to selfpreservation, No one knows for sure what happened, small scale or large, No one knows precisely what went wrong, But before he dies, the producer will know this much: Something went wrong,

I was so excited to get my hands on this book, The premise iscontestants on a reality TV show, They are sent into the woods to face challenges that will test their endurance, . . they are told that it's about survival, But the show creators and producers have another plan up their sleeves and things begin to have a darker undercurrent to them, Each contestant is told a safety phrase 'Ad tenebras dedi', and saying it is the only way that they can opt out of the show and go home.
Then, while they are out there, a disaster of global proportions happens and thecontestants, completely cut off from society, know nothing of it, When it does become known to them, they all react very differently, This is the story of one of the contestants, Zoo,

A sense of extreme unimportance overwhelms me, This show isn't about me, It's not about the other contestants, It's about the world we've entered, We're bit players, our purpose one of entertainment, not enlightenment, I've been thinking about this whole experience the wrong way I'm not

here because I'm interesting or because I'm scared of having kids, I'm simply an accent on their creation.
No one cares if I make it to the end, All they care about is that the viewers watch to the end,

Zoo thinks that the catastrophe is fake, all aspects of it planted by the producers of the show for the sake of good entertainment, She is traveling east on foot, towards her home, thinking that a clue has led her to the route she is on, The story is told in alternating view points, One being what's happening with Zoo, present day, on her travels and you get a firsthand account of what she's experiencing, and the way her mind has started to twist everything to work it as a part of the show.
. . but no matter what, she refuses to utter the safety phrase, she refuses to quit, The alternating chapters are told mainly from Zoo's perspective, but some from the other contestants and other people associated with the show as well, aboutweeks or so previously.
You see the beginning of the show and you slowly learn the direction it was going in,

I cup my face in my hands, block out the world, a world that keeps insisting on its own existence,

I've never read anything quite like this before, though sitelinkStation Eleven shares some similar elements, I don't want to go into too much detail either and give away the plot, Had some of the details been more ironed out for me, I think this would've been astar read, . . there were just certain scenes and details throughout the book that, to me, were a bit hard to envision and some that I thought seemed unrealistic,

The hardest part for me though had to be the chapters centering around Zoo and her present day travel, You don't know at the beginning of the book what, exactly, happens to the world, . . but you're given enough clues to figure it out fairly early on, And being in Zoo's mind and realizing how warped her perception had become, was honestly a bit heartbreaking, She is so convinced that the show is still filming, so she has the mentality that the show won't let anything too bad happen to her, . . they won't throw anything at her that she can't handle, And it takes something very intense to finally snap her out of it and really open her eyes to the devastation that has happened around her in such a short amount of time.


This is a book that I will be thinking about for some time to come, I'm betting, 'Thought provoking' doesn't even begin to cover it,

Admittedly The Last One was not for me,

Very little to do with the quality of the writing, that was good, excellent in places, But the story lacked cohesion for me and I did not really relate to any of the characters, Plus the authors prediliction for the use of real names in parts and nicknames in others did cause me some head scratching occasionally and dumped me out of the story.


The premise is excellent and for the most part executed well, A survival reality tv show, the contestants challenged, both in groups and individually, Meanwhile in the other world that they are cut off from, something is happening, Or is it I think if the author had played more with the possibilities that "Zoo" yes that one is a nickname may genuinely be on her own in a dying world or indeed it may still be part of the show, this might have been more bang on for me.
But it was a little wishy washy,

What I DID like, parts of Zoo's journey, her thoughts and feelings, didn't create enough emotion underneath to really grab me again the disconnect from the character but in fairness that is very subjective and others will see it differently.


So ultimately well written but I failed to engage, The ending was actually the best part but by then I had really lost interest,

So we are back to the start, This one was not really for me,

The Last One by Alexandra Olivia is aBallantine publication, I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review,

I really dont remember requesting this book from Netgalley, but apparently I did, I dont know what made me think this was a book I wanted to read, because one of the main threads is based on reality television, something I really dont like or enjoy, and the other thread puts the book firmly into a popular genre, or theme, I dont care for all that much and will be happy to see the back of, hopefully sooner, rather than later.



I have no idea what I was thinking when I requested it, but I have noticed many of my Goodreads friends are reading this one, so I bumped it up a few slots on the old TBR pile to see what all the fuss was about.



To be honest, I thought the story could be a scathing parody, even satirical, because I found myself simultaneously rolling my eyes at the contestants or laughing at how the author portrayed them, which is exactly the way they appear of these silly shows.
But, as the story progresses, it becomes quite apparent something far more sinister has occurred and our girl, Zoo, is not aware of it, continuing on with her quest to win a million dollars.


If I could hand out an A for effort, then this book would deserve one because of its originality, creativity, imagination, and experimentation, On one hand it works as an interesting character study, but in other ways its too vague, rushed, and the characters are not developed enough to evoke an emotional connection to them.
While the setup is simple or basic, its still, perhaps, a wee bit too ambitious, needing something I cant quite put my finger on,

Despite the subgenre and themes that I am not overly fond of, Im still glad I gave the book a try, If nothing else, it was a change of pace for me, and gave my brain a different type of workout for a change,

Overall, this one getsstars




I havent had a great read from Netgalley in months, Im glad that I saw this on the most requested section and decided to give it a try, One of the best decisions Ive made this,

If youre planning on reading this novel then you should avoid spoilers at all cost, I read the short summary provided by the author on Goodreads and immediately read the novel, Its onlypages, and I was really happy about this fact, Unfortunately, after reading the whole novel, Im actually asking for more, I normally avoid lengthy novels because Im a busy with college, but youll understand why Im asking for more, This novel is amazing.

When I got to around, I was already projecting my rating for the novel, I always do this when I read, and I normally project ratings in random parts of the novel, In this case, I was ready to give this novelat most,in, The reason is that I didnt see anything special about it, The plot is engaging, but it lacked the wow factor, Fortunately the last/of the novel completely made up for the lack of wowfactor I was looking for,

The characters are proficiently written, and I really liked the main character early on in the novel, The supporting characters are diverse and fun to read about,

The novel consists of alternating chapters between early on the event, and the latter part, Im not going to spoil anything, because it would surely ruin the whole novel, Even a hint of spoilers would mess this novel up for you, You need to read this with as little information as possible,

I liked how everything progressed, It didnt seem like it was going to wrap up nicely, but the author managed to do it, At one point youre probably assuming that this is going to happen, or this is not going to happen, but the author throws in a completely different situation and youll be knocked off your seat.
The twists and turns in the novel

The ending is both great and confusing at the same time, The ending is very crucial when it comes to my final rating of any novel, I dont care if the novel isstar materialin, If the ending ruins the whole thing, astar rating can go down to astar rating, Its great that the ending of this novel helped give it a boost from,tostars. Im still hoping for a sequel or a side story to be honest, but that might ruin the first book, Youll understand everything if youve read this amazing novel,

/stars. Clearly not a perfect novel, but its really entertaining and worth your time, Its relatively short but its going to make you ask for more, even though theres never going to be another book because its a standalone novel,

Thank you Netgalley for giving me an advance readers copy in exchange for an honest review, .