In The Last Bookstore on Earth (pub. date January 7, 2024), by Lily Braun-Arnold, the immaturity and poor choices made by the narrator indicated that it was clearly for a young adult audience. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this queer post-apocalyptic climate fiction,
Narrated by Liz, a teenager who is living alone in the bookstore where she worked before the storm that ended the world as she knew it (and that ended her family), Liz has stayed in the bookstore because she doesn’t believe she has anywhere else to go. People sporadically come and go, and she acts sort of as a post office for people to leave messages for others. She also writes down their stories, (which separate the chapters) and the people who come in offer her food and valuables in exchange. Her thoughts are still fixated on Ava, her former co-worker and crush, who left several months before.
Liz is a little worried when a regular customer tells her that there is another storm coming, as the store isn’t in the best shape, with a hole in the roof, but she doesn’t really have the skills or materials to fix anything. Then someone, who turns out to be another teenage girl named Maeve, breaks into the bookstore one night, claiming to just need a place to crash. After some initial squabbling, they decide to work together, after Maeve finds a generator and Liz gets hurt trying to start it.
Everyone is dealing with PTSD from the first storm and the events afterwards, and there are wandering groups of people around, but luckily, up to this point, Liz has remained safe. But has associating with Maeve now put Liz in danger, too? And what if they don’t get repairs done before the next storm?
I recommend it if you like climate and post-apocalyptic fiction, suitable for young adult readers. The author stayed away from any anti-fat bias or descriptions of body types or sizes, for the most part, so I consider it weight-neutral.
Reading While Fat 