The Last One - Alexandra Oliva

Description

She wanted an adventure. She never imagined it would go this far.TWELVE CONTESTANTS
When Zoo agrees to take part in a new reality TV show, In The Dark, she knows that she will be tested to the limits of her endurance. Beating eleven competitors in a series of survival tasks deep in the forest will be the ultimate challenge before she returns home to start a family.

A GAME WITH NO END
As the contestants are overcome by hunger, injury and psychological breakdown, the mind games to which Zoo is subjected grow dark beyond belief. This isn't what she signed up for: the deserted towns and gruesome props. Is this a game with no end? alone and disoriented, Zoo must summon all her survival skills - and learn new ones as she goes . . .

Review

The idea of this book really appealed to me, however, I struggled to read it. It's only 350 pages but it's taken me far longer to read than a book of that length would normally take me. 

Imagine all that happens on a reality show, and every word of it written down, plus all the stuff you don't see that happens off camera - it makes for a very long 350 pages. I understand that if you commit to writing about a reality tv show you have to be in it for the long haul - it just wasn't for me. It felt a little groundhog day.

There is also the mechanism of the flip flop story telling. To begin with this confused me as I thought I had missed something. The action goes from the reality tv show as it begins and progresses to the reality tv show much later on. Once I realised that it was ok, but I couldn't understand the need for it. 

Towards the end there is a twist which I can see maybe necessitates the flip flop approach, except by then I had worked out what was happening anyway and just waited for the character to catch up. I thought it was a little far fetched but can see that the way the character has to cope without a vital piece of her everyday life could just about mean that she is slow on the uptake.

This is YA fiction - however I think the YA audience are just as smart if not smarter than some of the older generation. I personally feel they may get bored with the book before the ending. 

I did enjoy the parts of the book which related what was happening and what the TV editor would be broadcasting - very interesting and will make me rethink some of what I see on TV.

I'm giving this book 3 out of 5 stars. My thanks to Netgalley for an ARC copy to review.