Last One At The Party by Bethany Clift

Last One At The Party by Bethany Clift.

Published 4th February 2021 by Hodder and Stoughton.

From the cover of the book:

THE END OF EVERYTHING WAS HER BEGINNING

It's December 2023 and the world as we know it has ended.

The human race has been wiped out by a virus called 6DM ('Six Days Maximum' - the longest you've got before your body destroys itself).

But somehow, in London, one woman is still alive. A woman who has spent her whole life compromising what she wants, hiding how she feels and desperately trying to fit in. A woman who is entirely unprepared to face a future on her own.

Now, with only an abandoned golden retriever for company, she must travel through burning cities, avoiding rotting corpses and ravenous rats on a final journey to discover if she really is the last surviving person on earth.

And with no one else to live for, who will she become now that she's completely alone?

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You might think a book about an apocalyptic pandemic might not be the best choice of reading material bearing in mind the current state of the world, but have no fear, this wonderful debut from Bethany Clift is such an original take on the hackneyed disaster tale that you will definitely find it quite a tonic - I know I did!

Our thirty-something narrator is apparently the only survivor of a terrible pandemic, for reasons she is unable to fathom. She has found the going a bit tough for most of her life, despite trying to convince herself that her life, job and relationship were rosy, and has no idea how she is going to cope now she is all alone in the world. Cue massive breakdown... and who can blame her. But it also seems that the collapse of civilisation might just be the making of her.

The tale plays out beautifully in the near future, with scenes cut in from her pre-lone survivor days and, as we follow her journey through the new normal, this serves to builds the complete picture of how she has come to be where she is, and why she the does what she does. Bethany Clift's irreverent style carries you along with ease in both timelines, and with a massive sprinkling of the best gallows humour I have read for a very long time. 

Ok, so it's hard to ignore that an apocalypse is quite central to this story - there are a lot of gruesome scenes described in the telling of this tale, but they go with the territory and a pandemic of this scale is going to leave quite a mark on the landscape. However, it is the humour, and the emphasis on life rather than death, that make everything work so well, and save the dark and very emotional elements of the story from overwhelming you. I wiped away a tear at many points while reading this book, but my word, I had a jolly good laugh too!

I hesitate to use the phrase 'life affirming' in a book that contains so many corpses, but essentially this is what Last One At The Party is all about. It's about finding your way when things seem hopeless... finding your inner strength... coming to terms with who you are... and being happy with what you discover about yourself. Even if dystopian nightmares are not your usual bookish fodder, there is a lot in this book that will be for you, and I guarantee it will make you think about how you are living your life now as well as what you would do in the same circumstances.

I absolutely loved everything about this book, and cannot wait to read more from Bethany Clift - by the way Bethany, I really, really need to know what happens next!

The Last One At The Party is available to buy from your favourite book retailer now.

Thank you to Steven Cooper of Hodder Books for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review and for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the author:

Bethany Clift is an graduate of the Northern Film School and has had projects in development with Eon and Film 4, as well as being a director of her own production company.

Last One At The Party is her debut novel.