I was expecting a dystopian novel but unfortunately this failed to deliver. The plot was ok but quite forgettable. The writing was average.

Due to a family passing at the time, I was unable to download this in time before it was archived, and having only returned after several years away due to it severely affecting me, I am now working my way through those reviews I was unable to get to to detail the issue. Thank you for the opportunity, and I look forward to working with you in the future.

The book was very well written and flowed well. The plot was great. Everything I thought it would be from the description

Rachel lives an almost hermit-like life far from others deep in the Australian bush. So when a young woman arrives asking for help for her sick baby, Rachel is at first tempted to turn them away. But listening to the woman, Hannah, she begins to realise that the civilisation she's fled from has started to crumble under a pandemic, and that Rachel herself may be the only person left who can help.
At first they head for the nearest town ('nearest' being a bit of a relative term as the story is set in the Australian outback) to find Rachel's sister who's the doctor there. Then, finding she's already left, they follow her presumed trail to Canberra. It's road trip with a difference as besides the natural difficulties they have to face survivors as desperate as themselves, and a new plague of 'demons' or 'spirits' which kill through fear.

There's a lot here that readers of apocalyptic fiction will find familiar - a person living safely outside of society during a time of upheaval is forced to take a journey out of their secure bubble, to confront the chaos and dangers of the outside world. And if Rachel thought the outside was dangerous before, it's now doubly, triply, so, with bush fires, survivor groups and the demons to be evaded, plus she has Hannah and the baby to look after.

It's a gripping enough read but too similar to other apocalyptic stories to really stand out from the crowd. Its main difference comes in that, for once, the world is going to be saved by women rather than men.

The Last Woman in the World

Fear is her cage. But what's outside is worse...

It's night, and the walls of Rachel's home creak in the darkness of the Australian bush. Her fear of other people has led her to a reclusive life as far from them as possible, her only occasional contact with her sister. 

A hammering on the door. There stand a mother, Hannah, and her sick baby. They are running for their lives from a mysterious death sweeping the Australian countryside - so soon, too soon, after everything.

Now Rachel must face her worst fears to help Hannah, search for her sister, and discover just what terror was born of us. . . and how to survive it.

I felt slightly breathless reading this story of destruction and apocalypse. So much so, that by the end I had very mixed feelings. I was glad to have finished the book, because I’d been feeling a low level panic and despair. However, it was so prescient and close to our current existence that I felt it needed to be read, however uncomfortable. This is a book borne of a fury that we treat our world the way we do. I write this as I’m laid on my bed - I’ve been unwell this week - watching Storm Eunice attempting to tear the roofing felt from the neighbour’s shed. It was only yesterday that I watched in disbelief as a town in Brazil was completely engulfed by a massive landslide. As I think of the state of our politics, the dreaded virus and the scenes from the Australian bushfires that left me distraught I know that the world Inga Simpson is writing about isn’t something far off future Armageddon. This could happen tomorrow. It is our now, not our future.

Yet still I veer between thinking I must do better and feeling that whatever I do will never count while those who actually have power can hold a ‘landmark’ climate change summit and not decide on anything worth the paper it’s typed on. Simpson has clearly felt a need for change for a very long time and this novel is her retort to our complacency and really does hit home. She uses the medium of the thriller to make our hearts race, our fears run rampant and spells out that this is our future if we don’t change right now. Where the films and books of my childhood concentrated on possible threats from outside - nuclear war in War Games, aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Alien. Here the threat is so real, because it’s already coming true. It comes from within. We are killing our own planet.

The setting is the city of Canberra, but it’s the incredible and unique flora and fauna of the Australian bush that’s so powerful in the novel. The author’s love for her homeland is so evident in her descriptions of the bush and it’s clear that the basis of the novel comes out of those terrible bushfires and the pandemic. I felt her pain at the loss of wildlife and their habitat. There are themes that flow through all of the authors writing - solitude, the need for quiet, a dislike of large crowded spaces and a total mistrust of elements of modern culture such as social media. The way Rachel feels as one by one these aspects of modern life disappear shows exactly how dependent we’ve all become on constant information and confirmation of events, beliefs and what other’s think.

‘It was a world gone silent. Silenced. There was no help. No news. No advice. No solution.’

I know people who might implode if they were left by themselves without a constant echo chamber of validation. Who do we become when our self is not reflected back to us? Already we can all see people’s standard of living slipping, their security eroded, their sense that someone is in charge and knows what to do about this shattered. We have all slipped down the scale from trying to be fully self-actualised beings, to being unable to keep ourselves warm. If there is no one to tell us how to cope we become very basic versions of a human - scraping by to survive and without the tools we once had to be self sufficient or alone. These are the aspects Simpson considers between the action and the conclusion the reader draws might be confronting and upsetting for some. At the very least it will make you think about the way you treat the world and fellow humans, especially those who have to live in the future we’ve created. I have to say I felt like a product of capitalism when I read the following section:

‘Now it was too late and Isaiah, if he survived, would never see half the things she had seen, taken for granted, gulped down.’

There’s a great thriller here that is addictive, frightening and full of heart-stopping moments. Underneath is just as powerful, but quietly so. For this reader, that made it even more profound.



An edited and extended copy of this review will be on my blog in the next week.

TW: Death, anxiety disorders, gore, violence.

Rachel, an artist and glass blower, lives as a hermit in the middle of nowhere. Only getting visits from her sister twice a year, she is completely shut off from the world and that is just the way she likes it. So when a young mother knocks on her door and begs her to help her sick baby, what is Rachel to do? Any why is this woman talking about a pandemic which has killed most of the population through fear?

I enjoyed the writing style of “The Last Woman in the World”. The short, snappy chapters meant that I got engaged in Rachel’s world really quickly. It’s a really interesting concept for a book and and relevant to the world we live in today. There is something oddly comforting about a pandemic worse than the one you are living through. It’s atmospheric and poignant. Some sections in the book are bound to evoke a wave of emotion and stay with you. For me, it’s the child alone in the playground. Rachel’s character arc is definitely one of the best parts of the book.

At points my attention dropped whilst reading it. My main issue with the book is how easily the obstacles in the plot are overcome. Traits that are long ingrained in Rachel’s character are solved with ease. A solution to the pandemic lands in their lap. It lacked credibility for me.

It’s an interesting read and original concept. Fans of dystopian books will enjoy it but it may not be the best book they have read within that genre..

Thank you to the author, publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to review an advanced copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this dystopian thriller, which was beautifully written and engaging. I loved the main character Rachel. Honestly, as much as I needed to know how it ended-I didn’t want it to! I needed more!!

Does the World need a Dystopian novel set in a future Canberra? Well, if you're looking for a post-apocalyptic landscape you could do worse than the ACT.

The Last Woman In The World starts off with Rachel, a reclusive glassblower living in a remote studio next to a river deep in Eden-Monaro, visited by a distraught young mother, Hannah, and her sick baby Isaiah. The world, it seems, has collapsed. There are bushfires, there has been a pandemic, and now demons have caused almost everyone to drop dead just where they were standing. Isaiah need antibiotics and Rachel agrees to set out with Hannah, overland, to Nimmitabel where her sister Monique is a GP.

For half the novel, then, this is a road trip through Nimmitabel and on to Canberra. I'll be honest, it dragged. We have seen it before - The Road, Station Eleven and others - dodging the enemy, bushfires and the rogue survivors.

Then when Rachel and Hannah reach Canberra the surreality starts. The demons are there in force; while rival factions of survivors are bunkered up planning their next moves. But like the road trip, once you've got the idea it rather drags on. Oh, and Rachel drip feeds this idea of a devastating incident in her past.

There are passages that are very evocative. I loved the glass-blowing studio and the scenes in and around Parliament. But it felt like there was fair bit of filler to join up these rather accomplished set pieces. Hmmm.

And it is probably a wild coincidence, but the two most recent novels by Kimberley Starr, another Australian writer, have featured demons that only the protagonist can see, and bushfires...

I loved this book it was so beautifully written getting right into the head of the main character Rachel and it felt at times like you were looking through her eyes. It’s a hard book to describe because so much of it is about thoughts and feelings as Rachel battles her inner demons and the real ones that are out there also.
The book has a real sense of fear in a world that has gone terribly wrong and as Rachel struggles to help a woman with a sick baby who has turned up on her doorstep against all her better judgment she sets off on a journey that will change her life forever.
Although this book has a lot of sadness it also has at its heart hope and I think because of the stunning writing this is the thing that really comes across as you are reading it you can feel the despair and the heat of the fires as tension mounts.
So a book I was blown away with I had no idea what to expect when I started to read it and I just completely fell in love with it , many thanks to Inga Simpson for a fabulous read.
My thanks also to NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK, Sphere for giving me the chance to read the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

It was the title, The Last Woman In The World that first attracted my attention to the book,
I wanted to know who this “Last Woman” was, how she had survived and where everyone else was. Then the cover further intrigued me, it features a bird trapped within a dome/cage. I think the by-line of, “Fear is her cage, but what’s outside is worse” it certainly has you thinking about who this feeling or being caged by their own fear and what could be even worse on the outside of their cage. The genres I have seen listed for this book are General Adult Fiction and Literary Fiction and though I agree with those I would also add Thriller, and Post Apocalyptic. In fact, I feel I should also add the book could be categorised as Speculative Fiction with some horror thrown in.

The book is set in a world that has been ravaged by wild fires, hit by a pandemic and more recently survivors are being dying because of what is referred to in the book as “them”.

The main characters in the book are Rachel, who lives isolated, very much by choice and is quite self-sufficient. To make a living Rachel sells her art which she makes out of blown and shaped glass. Rachel is the type of person who has a place for everything and everything in its place sort of person. Rachel doesn’t even go anywhere for supplies or to deliver her artwork, she has a woman called Mia who comes to her to drop off supplies and collect and deliver her art pieces. Mia has performed this service for many years, the only other person Rachel really interacts with is her older sister Monique who supplies her with medication for her anxiety. Rachel much prefers her own company and solitude. Rachel’s homestead is surrounded by a high wall with the only way in being a very visible pathway. Throughout all the recent problems of wild fires, Rachel has helped to fight them, then returned to her haven. Rachel has just begun to wonder where Mia is, that her visit with supplies etc is a little overdue when she hears a knock on her door. Rachel’s first reaction is to turn off the lights, and pretend no one is in. Hoping whoever it is will travel on to someone else’s property for whatever they need. The woman at the door has seen the lights on in Rachels home and is desperate for help for her baby son, whose cries of distress are the thing that finally push Rachel into answering her door.

The woman is, Hannah and she is alone with her ill baby Isaiah. She is desperate for help with poorly Isaiah who has a cough and a high temperature. Hannah’s husband works away in a nearby town, the other side of Nimmitabel, where Monique, Rachel’s sister lives with her partner Bill. Rachel allows Hannah and her baby to stay overnight but it soon becomes apparent that both Hannah and her baby need Rachel to travel with them if they have any chance at all of survival. Rachel agrees to accompany them to Nimmitabel where her sister Monique works as both Doctor & Vet. Rachel reassures Hannah that Monique will help baby Isaiah.

The book goes on to tell the story of the two women travelling in search of help for Isaiah, the people, problems and the trio trying to keep “them” out of their own heads so “they” cannot claim and kill the trio. Sadly, when they arrive at Nimmitabel, it seems they have missed Monique and Bill by hours. With danger all around them they decide to press on, with Hannah wanting to find her husband and Rachel wanting to catch up with her sister Monique.

I think this book may once have been read and perhaps some would have referred to the pandemic parts in it as being a little far-fetched. However, in light of the recent events and circumstances surrounding Covid-19, the pandemic references in the book are so very easily believable. The book seems to amble on rather slowly in some sections, yet it still kept me wanting to read more of the book. The whole “them” is kind of left to the reader to draw their own conclusions about.

To sum up I found this a really difficult book to rate, as though I did enjoy it, it also felt a little laboured in places. I felt the book was more about the growth and changes within the character of Rachel, and the fact she has to face situations outside her normal comfort zone in order to help Hannah and Isaiah. The fires, the pandemic, and “they/them” felt secondary issues in the book.

Rachel leads a reclusive life far out in the Australian bush, away from people and all the dangers they bring with them. Her only real social contact is with her sister, a doctor in the city. That is, until the night a woman hammers on Rachel's door. Her name is Hannah, her baby is sick, and she is running from a disaster which has changed the landscape of the world as they knew it overnight.

At first Rachel just wants to get rid of Hannah. She doesn't want to leave the safety of her home, she doesn't want to confront what Hannah is telling her, and she doesn't want to be around other people. But she quickly realises that she needs to find her sister and seek out answers to what is happening, and the two women set off together, not knowing what they will uncover on the way, or what kind of nightmare is heading for them...

I really enjoyed this dystopian thriller, which was beautifully written and engaging. It did remind me very much of the movie Birdbox,but I liked that the 'enemy' remained nameless and faceless, which made the book feel even more eerie and frightening. A recommended read for any fan of dystopia and/or horror.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher, who granted me a free ARC copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

I sped through this.
From the opening chapters where Rachel is happiest left alone,through every other chapter as she battles with her anxiety and outside forces to cross country to save a strangers child.
Her strength grows and grows no matter what's thrown at her.
And a lot does get thrown at her.
A proper page turner for me

A good well written book that I couldn’t put down. Will be actively searching for more books by this author. Well done.

I enjoyed this book, it was well written with an interesting storyline and well developed characters, I also thought the setting was great and it really added to the creepy intense atmosphere.