Author: Laura Pohl
Series: The Last 8 #1
Genre: YA Science Fiction
Release Date: March 5th, 2019
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Source: ARC received from publisher which did not influence my opinion
My rating: 4.5 Stars
Synopsis:
A high-stakes survival story about eight teenagers who outlive an alien attack—perfect for fans of The 5th Wave
Clover Martinez has always been a survivor, which is the only reason she isn't among the dead when aliens invade and destroy Earth as she knows it.
When Clover hears an inexplicable radio message, she's shocked to learn there are other survivors—and that they're all at the former Area 51. When she arrives, she's greeted by a band of misfits who call themselves The Last Teenagers on Earth.
Only they aren't the ragtag group of heroes Clover was expecting. The group seems more interested in hiding than fighting back, and Clover starts to wonder if she was better off alone. But then she finds a hidden spaceship, and she doesn't know what to believe…or who to trust.
My Review:
This was a really good science fiction story that I'm happy to see is going to have a sequel. It left off in a way that we need it! Although it definitely led up to the very end as if it cold be a standalone, the ending left us hanging, not knowing what would happen! You get a lot of how it starts from the synopsis above. But the way the aliens destroy humans is really pretty terrifying, and then how that in turn affects any humans that they don't kill is scary on its own! We're left wondering why in the world the aliens don't seem to see Clover, why she is left alive. And while Clover wonders that herself, she feels like being alone, not having been able to save her friend or family, maybe she doesn't want to go on. Until she catches by accident a message on the radio calling any survivors to meet up at Area 51. Only once she gets there, it seems as if the other teens there don't trust her or want to give her a chance. At first. They have a leader, who doesn't like that Clover comes in telling the others living there what is going on out in the world. They've basically been hiding there, living on the things that are still stockpiled because of where it is.
But finding other people makes Clover realize there might even be more of them out there. And either way, life is worth going on, and fighting. It takes the death of one of their own for them to finally decide to try to do something, fight back, take back Earth. As you might expect though, there are all kinds of secrets and hidden things at Area 51. Spaceships? Got them. Alien life form? Got it. You just won't believe where they are, and who knows about them, and what all they know.
Definitely pick this up for a page-turning science fiction adventure.