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Last One at The Party - Bethany Clift

 


Genre: Science Fiction / Dystopian Fiction

Release Date: 4th February 2021


Trigger Warnings: Swearing, References to COVID-19, Death, Drugs, Illness, suicide.


December 2023.

The 6DM virus has ripped through the world and life as we know it is over. Once you've got it, as the name implies, you've got Six Days Maximum left alive. The only way out? T600 - but it's not a cure, it's a suicide pill.

The UK has blown up the channel tunnels, started to fight over the one single tea plantation left in the country and tried its hardest to stop the spread. They had a practice run back in 2020 and handled it terribly but this time they've done everything right ... and it's still not enough. The doomsday clock has reached midnight. The human race is finished. 

But by some miracle, she's still alive. Well, surviving anyway. After spending her entire life hiding in the shadows to please others, there's nobody left to impress but the golden retriever she found wandering around the abandoned street. Is she truly alone in the world? If there's others left out there, how can she possibly find them? And if there isn't ... there's always T600.

Our nameless heroine was all of us in our end-of-the-world fantasies - torn between the dread looming over us and the excitment of going whereever you want, drinking whatever you want, taking whatever you want with no consequences. Watching her journey into this newly savage world was morbidly hilarious and spine-chilling at the same time.

This entire book was a neck-snapping, visceral contrast page by page, jumping from champagne and cocaine to churches full of bodies and leaving me reeling trying to peice together the world being created here. 

"Last One at The Party" is by far the only book that I've come across that has been able to honestly and respectfully reference the 2020 Pandemic without coming across as crass or gimmicky - everything was handled sensitively but of course it could be unsettling to some readers. 

Addictively haunting and oddly beautiful, this was a deliciously dark story that is perfect for any fans of dystopian fiction, if you loved The Loneliest Girl in The World or The Girl With all The Gifts I can't reccommend this enough - with all the quirks of a classic apocolypse but with it's own unrepeatable, iconic identity.

Right from the very first, expletive line of this book I was sucked into a different world and stayed there in some otherworldly daydream until the very last page that somehow broke me and made me smile all at once, leaving me with painful questions and just enough answers for a dangerous glimmer of hope. 

I have just one issue with this story - I'm extremely annoyed I'll never get to experience reading this for the first time again. But you can, and you definitely should. 


RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐


Thank you to NetGalley and Bethany Clift for an ARC in return for an honest review

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