Review: The Last 8 by Laura Pohl

I was interested in reading this book because I enjoy speculative fiction and science fiction. I definitely enjoyed the writing style but there were some key details that pulled me out of the story.

The main character, Clover is living a normal teenage life when one day… aliens invade. I’ve thought about it!! I’m sure you have too. The battle is over for humans before it even begins. As Closer is on the run with her ex-boyfriend Noah… she sees him turned to dust right before her eyes. In a strange twist of fate though, the aliens appear to be completely uninterested in her.

Clover discovers that she’s alone, everyone she knew and loved has vanished. So she begins to drive across the US. One of the things that I found bothered me was that Clover keeps her iPhone with her as she steals and drives cars across the country. Reference is made to her looking for a house with solar panels to charge her phone…but I got kind of distracted by the fact that this was a teenager who simply didn’t plug in her phone using the car jack! That may seem like a small detail to focus on, but it was about authenticity to me. What teenager wouldn’t want that phone plugged in and charged? What about the cell network? Even without humans to maintain it, wouldn’t it have continued to function for a while? There were a few too many unanswered questions for my liking.

Eventually, Clover is playing with the CD player in the car and discovers a radio broadcast giving a thinly veiled hint that there may be survivors holed up at Area 51. Naturally, Clover heads there and finds that only a handful of teenagers have survived the alien attacks. One of them happens to be related to someone who previously worked at Area 51, but the adults have gone off to fight…and eventually stopped returning.

Clover sets about trying to motivate the group to fight to live rather than hiding from what is going on.

I enjoyed the diversity of the group of teenagers and, for the most part, their interaction seemed pretty realistic. I did find it a little difficult to believe that it would be simple for them to continue to run a place as significant as Area 51 with only a handful of teenagers.

I would say this would appeal to a young audience, perhaps one looking for a simple story that has a bit of a science fiction element to it.

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I was given an ARC of this book by NetGalley and that did not influence the content of my review.