LAST CHANCE LIVE by Helena Haywoode Henry
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I received an Advance Reader Copy of this book from the publisher in order to write this review.
The publisher’s summary
Squid Game meets Dear Justyce in an explosive young adult novel about a teenage girl on death row who competes on a reality show in hopes of winning her freedom.
Last Chance Live! is the most popular reality show in America—and eighteen-year-old death row inmate Eternity Price’s last chance to live. Getting cast on the show could win her clemency preventing her execution… if she can convince the viewing audience she deserves a second chance. The catch? If America doesn’t vote for her, she loses the chance to appeal her sentence, and she’ll be executed within a week of being eliminated from the show. And since Eternity’s been unpopular her whole life, she’s terrified America won’t pick her. But any chance of getting out of prison and back to her little brother Sincere, no matter how slim, is better than rotting away in her cell.
Eternity never expected to find her first real friends in a reality TV house full of people battling for survival after being convicted of capital crimes, but that’s exactly what happens. So when she gets the opportunity to sabotage them and secure her own victory, she has a choice to make: protect the friendships and acceptance she’s always longed for at the cost of her own life, or sacrifice her newfound community. Eternity must ultimately decide what forgiveness, family, and freedom mean to her, and how far she’ll go to win a game where the stakes are literally life or death.
My recommendation
This book was so good and so, so hard to confront as an adult: seeing laid out so baldly how our society fails our children, especially children of color. There is a constant overtone—recognized by Eternity herself—that rooting for Eternity to win means rooting for other teens to die. Henry also pulls no punches on the teens’ crimes, forcing readers to sit uncomfortably with the reality that Eternity and her peers have made catastrophic, fatal, and horrifying choices, and yet—at their cores—they remain normal kids that we can easily relate to. I believe this book is an important and powerful read, and I recommend it to anyone who is ready to confront the systemic horrors of our criminal justice system.
Note: Henry describes her book as speculative since the game show described doesn’t exist, but it doesn’t feel far from reality at all. Which is in itself part of the horror.
Susan the Librarian 