The Last Bookstore on Earth / Lily Braun-Arnold / Book Review

THE LAST BOOKSTORE ON EARTH

The world might be ending. For real, this time.

At least, that's what all the recent visitors to Liz Flannery's bookstore have been saying. She's not sure she believes them. She lived through one deadly Storm, after all, and she's been sheltering in this abandoned bookstore in suburban New Jersey since. But with these rumors about a new Storm on the way...

Liz might need to do some prep work to get the bookstore ready to weather another Storm. What she isn't prepared for is someone breaking into the store in the middle of the night. To be fair, Maeve didn't know anyone was living in the bookstore. She was just looking for her own shelter through the Storm. And as long as she's here, they might as well work together. But the Storm isn't the only threat bearing down on their lonely bookstore.

THOUGHTS

I adored this book! It's the perfect bookish apocalypse, ideal for anyone who has ever thought a bookstore would be the best place to hunker down through an apocalyptic storm. It's surprisingly warm and cozy for an apocalyptic story, and I really liked that shake-up of the usual genre conventions.

PROS

New Energy	I loved Liz as a protagonist because she's so different from the usual apocalyptic lead. She's not particularly efficient, talented, or knowledgeable. She's got no special skills. And she's been doing this survival thing for a while now (so she's not just someone waiting to be whipped into shape by a new apocalyptic reality). This new type of main character gives an entirely different energy to an apocalyptic world that I absolutely love!
Bookish Apocalypse	This bookstore might have seen better days, but that doesn't make it any less of an excellent setting. There's just something about a bookstore when the lights have gone off (in this case, permanently). It's spooky but also comforting and familiar to any bookish people out there. And as a bookseller, I can't tell you how many times I've had to shelter in place just like this (though for tornados, not world-ending environmental catastrophe). Overall, a great cozy setting for hunkering down and surviving through this apocalypse.
Human Goodness	Apocalyptic lit really has a dearth of human decency. Decency seems to be the first thing to go out the window when things get really bad. But that's not the case here. That isn't to say there aren't some bad actors here. There absolutely are. But it was nice to see in this quieter apocalypse a general sort of humanity peeking through. Liz isn't the usual apocalyptic protagonist, and the network that has sprung up around her isn't chaotic and dangerous. It's just ordinary people surviving however they can, and that's nice to see. Not everything human has to go away when the end of the world is nigh.

CONS

As much as I liked the shake-up of character conventions that was Liz, she was a bit... useless. And to a point, that's acceptable. Why would she know all this stuff? She's not a survivalist by any means. But she has been surviving for a while on her own now, and she was making some pretty unfortunate choices in this book that did have me wondering how she had made it this far relatively unscathed. It's a give-and-take, I guess.	A Bit... Useless
Hey, I get it. There aren't a lot of people around anymore. The options aren't great, and people are lonely. So I didn't hate how fast these girls fell for each other. But it still is a bit of a sticky point in YA, and a lot of readers won't like how quick the l-word gets tossed out here. It worked for me, but others might not feel the same.	Insta-Love, 2025 Edition
It's the end times. Tension is high, and not everybody's as laidback as Liz. I get that. But boy does this book escalate quickly right at the end. It felt a little too quick. It didn't quite match the tone of the book. I don't know that it was unrealistic, necessarily, but it did culminate so quickly and so violently that I was a little bit underwhelmed.	Quick to Anger

Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
9/10

Those who enjoyed the long-haul of Stephen King's The Stand will like dipping into this world of scraping-by survivors. Those who enjoyed the quieter apocalypse of Jessie Greengrass's The High House will like sheltering in place in this ramshackle bookstore.

Details Publisher: Delacorte Press Date: January 7, 2025 Series: N/A Add to Goodreads Buy it HERE

Note: I was provided with an ARC by the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions here are my own.