
Last Chance Live!
Penguin Young Readers Group · Hardcover · October 7, 2025
Squid Game meets Dear Justyce in an explosive young adult novel about a teenage girl on death row who competes on a reality show in hopes of winning her freedom.
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- Who it’s for
- A high-stakes reality-show premise sharpens questions of forgiveness, friendship, and who gets a second chance.
- Themes
- Forgiveness, Family, Freedom
- Genres
- YA Crime Thrillers, YA Survival Stories, YA Crime & Law
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Start with this bookAbout this book
Squid Game meets Dear Justyce in an explosive young adult novel about a teenage girl on death row who competes on a reality show in hopes of winning her freedom. A 2025 Booklist Editors’ Choice Last Chance Live! is the most popular reality show in America—and eighteen-year-old death row inmate Eternity Price’s last chance to live. Getting cast on the show could win her clemency preventing her execution… if she can convince the viewing audience she deserves a second chance.
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The catch? If America doesn’t vote for her, she loses the chance to appeal her sentence, and she’ll be executed within a week of being eliminated from the show. And since Eternity’s been unpopular her whole life, she’s terrified America won’t pick her. But any chance of getting out of prison and back to her little brother Sincere, no matter how slim, is better than rotting away in her cell. Eternity never expected to find her first real friends in a reality TV house full of people battling for survival after being convicted of capital crimes, but that’s exactly what happens. So when she gets the opportunity to sabotage them and secure her own victory, she has a choice to make: protect the friendships and acceptance she’s always longed for at the cost of her own life, or sacrifice her newfound community. Eternity must ultimately decide what forgiveness, family, and freedom mean to her, and how far she’ll go to win a game where the stakes are literally life or death.
A Vote for Life
A high-stakes reality-show premise sharpens questions of forgiveness, friendship, and who gets a second chance.
Come here for
- A tense collision of televised competition and life-or-death stakes
- Questions about justice, family, and the price of belonging
Expect
- A young woman weighing survival against newfound friendships
- Suspense rooted in public judgment and personal choice
Where it sits
| YA Crime Thrillers | 49% |
|---|---|
| YA Crime & Law | 38% |
| YA Survival Stories | 22% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- African American YA
- TV & Radio for Teens
- Activism & Social Justice
- Authors
- Helena Haywoode Henry
- Publisher
- Penguin Young Readers Group
- Published
- October 7, 2025
- Format
- Hardcover
- Theme
- Forgiveness · Family · Freedom
- Reading lane
- African American YA