The Last Girlfriend on Earth and Other Love Stories

Cover photo of the book The Last Girlfriend on Earth
Simon Rich
Star Rating
★★★★
Reviewer's Rating
Nov 24, 2020

The Last Girlfriend on Earth: And Other Love Stories ​by Simon Rich is a collection of eclectic and often surreal short stories centering around love and romance. For the most part, I very much enjoyed this book. It was an incredibly fast read, but I thought that it ultimately matched the book’s funny and slapdash style.  Typically I wouldn’t consider a book’s being “slapdash” to be a good thing, but with ​The Last Girlfriend on Earth ​I didn’t really have a problem with it. In fact, I think the book’s thrown together nature adds to its predominantly light and breezy feeling. ​The Last Girlfriend on Earth ​often feels more like a collection of comedy sketches than a traditional collection of short stories. And after finding out that Simon Rich is a former writer and producer for SNL, this makes a lot of sense. There were some stories in the book that I actually thought would have been better as comedy sketches. And although I really didn’t enjoy a couple of the stories, generally I found that the good outweighed the bad. Some stand out stories were “Unprotected,” “I Love Girl,” and “The Last Girlfriend on Earth.”

I found this book while in the midst of a reading slump and it truly reminded me how much fun reading can be. I honestly couldn’t put it down, and while I didn’t love every story, overall this was a very enjoyable book. I wouldn’t call it the “comedy work of the century” or anything, but there is no denying that ​The Last Girlfriend on Earth ​is a very fun book with a surprisingly potent dosage of emotional truth. I would recommend ​The Last Girlfriend on Earth: And Other Love Stories ​to anyone looking for something funny, offbeat, and heartfelt to brighten their day.

Written by
Delaney M.

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