Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State

It’s always hard to review a memoir, but this one particularly so. In The Last Girl, Nadia Murad recounts her experience of living through ISIS’s takeover of her Yazidi community, the mass execution of most of the men, and the enslavement of the women to be sabaya (sex slaves) for the militants.

Murad’s writing is clear & deliberate, detailing her trauma in hopes of raising awareness & bringing justice to bear on ISIS for their war crimes. She reminisces on her youth, growing up poor but with a loving mother, large family, and a very tight-knit religious minority community. Against this backdrop, the ISIS takeover & genocide is utterly devastating to read.

Murad mentions that she struggles to extend forgiveness to those who were not a part of ISIS but did not actively combat the new order. She candidly engages with the strain of balancing compassion against feeling abandoned. Even the family that ultimately aided her escape is not fawned over in the text. Murad acknowledges that while she is grateful, she wishes that dissenters had chosen to be more actively engaged with rescues and resistance. I admired her honesty and bravery.

Ultimately, this book is remarkable, haunting, courageous, and important. I strongly recommend you pick it up.

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ivassavi's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative sad medium-paced

3.5

(2021 Book#12)
3.5-3.75⭐️

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laurikas's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

3.5

This book is tough, the story is so harrowing it physically hurts to read it.

But I understand it's Nadia's right to tell it, however way she wants to tell it.
It does not do to keep silent, and what courage it must take to face it all every day. I admire her for speaking out and for being so active in trying to stop the atrocities against her ethnicity and religious belief.

The only reason I won't rate this any higher is that I expected a bit more from the book - perhaps some more historical context, a different approach to the storytelling, to what the future should look like, even more political, more demanding, more forceful. As it is, I felt it repetitive and very descriptive of violence that we know exist - world is evil - but that could be triggered differently.

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