A gorgeous lyrical debut, The Last One by Fatima Daas uses the power of language to tell a heart-wrenching, fractured tale of family and identity. 

Immediately after reading this ARC’s synopsis, I was not only entranced by its unique perspective - that of a French lesbian of Algerian descent struggling to stay true to herself within her Muslim family - but also by its prospective genre-bending combination of memoir and poetry collection. As I flipped through the first few pages, I already found myself falling in love with the grounding statement “My name is Fatima,” the frequent incorporation of Algerian Arabic as well as the wistful, reflective tone that further shrouded this story in an even deeper layer of care and hope. Just like that, I tore through the rest of this novella, shocked by how familiar I had already become with Fatima’s physical, mental and familial struggles.

Truly, this memoir not only proved to be short and easy to read, it also proved relatable to my own mental health struggles and familial experiences. As I read, I lost track of just how many aspects of Daas’s life I connected to, allowing me to further immerse myself in her story while also collecting an assortment of timeless quotes, my favorite of which being “...it's hard to always be on the outside looking in, looking at people, never with them, your life passing you by, everything passing you by.”

In the end, I rated this debut a solid 4 stars. While I do feel this could’ve been a longer, more fleshed-out and better-paced exploration of Daas’s life, I’m satisfied with the peek we got into the author’s experiences as a Muslim LGBTQ+ woman living in France. With that said, I highly recommend The Last One for anyone on the hunt for a short, but powerful work of nonfiction. Happy reading!