Book Review: Last Ones Left Alive by Sarah Davis-Goff

Thank you Flat Iron Books for giving me an advanced copy of this book to review. (Image courtesy of Goodreads.com)

Orpen is a teenage girl who was raised on a secluded island off the coast of Ireland in a post-apocalyptic world. With only her mother and her mother's partner Maeve to guide her, Orpen trains and learns to fight and survive in a world threatened by skrake, a zombie-like menace that has wiped out most of human life on the planet. When disaster strikes, Orpen ends up carrying an unconscious Maeve in a wheel barrow across destroyed Ireland, looking for other survivors and a city where she hopes she can make a new life, but is she really prepared to survive life and other humans off the island?

There were a lot of things that I loved about this book. First, I love that it flips back and forth a bit between the present and the past. I feel like that transition helps you better learn to understand Orpen as you continue reading.

I'll admit, I'm normally not a huge fan of zombie-like creatures in dystopic writing. However, I actually really found myself enjoying the concept of this book and the skrake. I think what I love most is that the book really focuses on Orpen, how she evolves as a person and learns about the world, and less about the skrake themselves.

Overall, I did enjoy the book, and would recommend it to fans of dystopia. The only downside I see is that I want to know more about the world Sarah Davis-Goff is building. Although the book was a wonderful stand-alone book, I could also see the potential for an amazing sequel should Sarah Davis-Goff choose to write one.