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The Last Girl Podcast
The Last Girl Podcast, a riveting psychological thriller, is the long-awaited culmination of the Katie Kampenfelt trilogy, which tells the story of an extraordinary seventeen-year-old girl and her shifting online identities
First came the novel Undiscovered Gyrl, which introduced us to Katie, a beautiful, vivacious blogger, heartbreaking in her desperate desire to find happiness. Allison Burnett adapted the novel into the indie film Ask Me Anything, which he directed, starring Britt Robertson, Martin Sheen, and Christian Slater.
Next came Another Girl, the chilling tale of Elle Overton, who, while recovering from a terrible heartbreak, begins a reckless online correspondence with someone claiming to be Katie. Burnett adapted it into an indie film of the same name, starring Sammi Hanratty, one of the stars of Showtime’s hit series Yellowjackets.
In The Last Girl Podcast, a brave young man goes online to investigate the murder of a friend and, in the process, comes face to face with the dark truth about Katie.
First came the novel Undiscovered Gyrl, which introduced us to Katie, a beautiful, vivacious blogger, heartbreaking in her desperate desire to find happiness. Allison Burnett adapted the novel into the indie film Ask Me Anything, which he directed, starring Britt Robertson, Martin Sheen, and Christian Slater.
Next came Another Girl, the chilling tale of Elle Overton, who, while recovering from a terrible heartbreak, begins a reckless online correspondence with someone claiming to be Katie. Burnett adapted it into an indie film of the same name, starring Sammi Hanratty, one of the stars of Showtime’s hit series Yellowjackets.
In The Last Girl Podcast, a brave young man goes online to investigate the murder of a friend and, in the process, comes face to face with the dark truth about Katie.
196 pages, Paperback
Published May 13, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 27, 2023
I bought this book as soon as I found out about it's existence. I finally read it and I couldn't be happier with it. The series started off about a young girls life during her leap year only to tragically go missing at the end. Followed by the second book with just emails going back and forth between Elle and Katie.... Atleast that's what you think only Katie isn't Katie but you play it off as it's been a few years she's grown and became a mom until Elle meets her demise at the end. Enter the third book, another girl mysteriously died having spoken to Katie shortly before a tech genius investigates the death of the last girl and uncovers much more revealing not only what happened to Katie but the girls in the second book as well and you'll never guess who it was. After finishing I looked at my books and I realized something. The authors name is in the same font as the first book but the second book is in all caps. Adding to the illusion that the author had nothing to do with the second book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 20, 2023
Amazingly written and what a way to end the trilogy!!
July 9, 2023
Amazing!!! Definitely a page turner, I would recommend this series. Just the ending to each book though, wow!!!
May 21, 2023
Life (or a semblance of life) on the Internet
California author Allison Burnett is able to absorb every facet of his created characters so completely that each of his books gives the reader the feeling that the first person narrator is the actual writer. Visit his previous books - CHRISTOPHER: A TALE OF SEDUCTION and THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL - and try to be convinced that the idiosyncratic characters are not real and writing their own memoirs. In UNDISCOVERED GYRL Burnett further challenged himself by writing a novel in the first person who happens to be both a girl and a female artifice created by the media we now live by - the Internet. He manages to make this Katie creation so credible that her incredibility works! Who is she really - spoiled mouthy high school graduate or the femme fatale she creates with the device of the blog? After the success of the cinematic adaptation of that book, Burnett offered ANOTHER GIRL as Book 2 and now THE LAST GIRL PODCAST as Book 3.
Burnett's writing style is so fluid that he made the initially wild idea for a novel capture the readers’ attention and makes us go along with the preposterous shenanigans of a character about whom we know little except for the persona she manufactures, scratching our heads at times trying to figure out how the deception will play out, while most of the time just voyeuristically going along for the ride. He knows his craft and after his sojourns into the edgy worlds of his previous novels, he has the guts to pull us further into those places most of us only silently peek at as we surf the Internet. Book 3 is written as a script for a true-crime podcast script, and involves mystery and murder. This time ‘round the synopsis states, ‘ a brave young man goes online to investigate the murder of a friend and, in the process, comes face to face with the dark truth about Katie.’ This is completely entertaining both as a story and as a real examination of where we are now in this distorted world of quasi-real communication and identities! Highly recommended.
California author Allison Burnett is able to absorb every facet of his created characters so completely that each of his books gives the reader the feeling that the first person narrator is the actual writer. Visit his previous books - CHRISTOPHER: A TALE OF SEDUCTION and THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL - and try to be convinced that the idiosyncratic characters are not real and writing their own memoirs. In UNDISCOVERED GYRL Burnett further challenged himself by writing a novel in the first person who happens to be both a girl and a female artifice created by the media we now live by - the Internet. He manages to make this Katie creation so credible that her incredibility works! Who is she really - spoiled mouthy high school graduate or the femme fatale she creates with the device of the blog? After the success of the cinematic adaptation of that book, Burnett offered ANOTHER GIRL as Book 2 and now THE LAST GIRL PODCAST as Book 3.
Burnett's writing style is so fluid that he made the initially wild idea for a novel capture the readers’ attention and makes us go along with the preposterous shenanigans of a character about whom we know little except for the persona she manufactures, scratching our heads at times trying to figure out how the deception will play out, while most of the time just voyeuristically going along for the ride. He knows his craft and after his sojourns into the edgy worlds of his previous novels, he has the guts to pull us further into those places most of us only silently peek at as we surf the Internet. Book 3 is written as a script for a true-crime podcast script, and involves mystery and murder. This time ‘round the synopsis states, ‘ a brave young man goes online to investigate the murder of a friend and, in the process, comes face to face with the dark truth about Katie.’ This is completely entertaining both as a story and as a real examination of where we are now in this distorted world of quasi-real communication and identities! Highly recommended.
January 17, 2024
I loved the concept of how all of this was played out. With book 1 being blog posts and book 1.5 being emails, I’m glad the trope of continuing with different forms of social networking was continued in the way of a podcast script
July 27, 2025
Watched the 2 movies forever ago, finally discovered the books and read all 3 over the past 2 weeks and WOW. Very long awaited ending and absolutely worth it. So much in under 200 pages?!? Wonderfully written. Patiently waiting for this to be created into a movie- the fans deserve it!!!
November 13, 2023
I read UNDISCOVERED GYRL right when it came out in 2009, and I watched the film based upon it ASK ME ANYTHING, produced and directed by the author, Allison Burnett, even before its release, if memory serves. If you have neither read nor seen both, you have missed A LOT--as both are excellent. But since the protagonist Katie Kampenfelt in GYRL is the "villain" in THE LAST GIRL, I will start there because she is the angst-filled and mysteriously disappeared adjuvant for this novel, the third of the trilogy, as well as the second, ANOTHER GIRL (also a film released in 2021). Burnett does not fail in GYRL in crafting Katie Kampenfelt, a young, very-lost-but-advantaged teenager with a deep pain camouflaged in brash sociopathy. Her unmeditated antics chronicled in her blog posts are a draw for similar or even not-so-similar young girl followers desiring vicarious thrills or permission to follow suit.
But Katie is unnaccounted for at the end of GYRL, likely dead, but no one knows for sure. The reader is left with a sort of victim-blaming--"Well, that is what happens when young girls play with fire"--urge to draw a nifty conclusion for themselves. And there it lies.
Yet it doesn't. In the sequel, ANOTHER GIRL, which I have not read yet (apologies Mr. Burnett, but I will now AND watch the film), the depressed protagonist Elle becomes obsessed with Katie, the fictional character in Burnett's novel, believes Katie is real, and follows a terrifying and reckless course (IMDB).
All of this is necessary background for THE LAST GIRL PODCAST, although Burnett easily guides the reader through the first two novels, as they are integral to the plot of this one. The "narrator" is podcast host Jeffrey, whose podcast reveals the plot in episodic format.
He begins by describing himself in retrospect as a tortured soul suffering loss, loneliness, and in a self-medicating despair. Yet, he finds love online with an ostensibly "perfect" girl, Pilar, who similarly falls for him. They develop a rapport that begins to draw him from his haze of melancholy and weed. However, like all self-destructive, substance abusing shut-ins, he blows it, and in a cruel and heartless way, so-much-so, that I decided I hated him and wasn't sure I wanted to finish reading. (Burnett writes "asshole" with aplomb--Read his other novels and you'll agree).
Nevertheless, I persisted (Ha! :), and soon Jeffrey redeems himself by realizing what a complete and utterly merciless dick he has been to Pilar (Oy, it's BAAAD), tries his best to recant, redeem, redress his act, but Pilar will not forgive him. To atone, he gets his sh*t together and begins to put his life back together. He knows he will not find happiness with any woman or in life itself unless he feels deserving of it.
Then Pilar sends him a 17-page typed letter describing the murder of her best friend Megan, who, like Elle in ANOTHER GIRL has become obsessed with Katiekampenfelt.com, is conviced Katie is real, and has this confirmed when she reaches out to "Katie," is messaged back by "Katie" and develops a close friendship. However, like Elle et.al (Second Novel), when she goes to meet "Katie," she turns up dead.
Pilar is desperate to solve this crime/mystery. Jeffrey desperately wants Pilar back, and is simultaneously intrigued by this murder, and sets about to solve it.
The rest of the novel is his doing just that. Jeffrey is clever, cunning, and uses his creepy cyber knowlege and creativity for a good cause this time instead of callous tests of loyalty.
The end is surprising and somewhat abrupt, but what is interesting is the self-insertion of the author as a character--not that that is out of line--since it is a book and a character that these murdered girls have thought to be real. I mean, how could Burnett not make at the very least a cameo appearance?
Anyway, I really loved this novel. I think you will, too.
But Katie is unnaccounted for at the end of GYRL, likely dead, but no one knows for sure. The reader is left with a sort of victim-blaming--"Well, that is what happens when young girls play with fire"--urge to draw a nifty conclusion for themselves. And there it lies.
Yet it doesn't. In the sequel, ANOTHER GIRL, which I have not read yet (apologies Mr. Burnett, but I will now AND watch the film), the depressed protagonist Elle becomes obsessed with Katie, the fictional character in Burnett's novel, believes Katie is real, and follows a terrifying and reckless course (IMDB).
All of this is necessary background for THE LAST GIRL PODCAST, although Burnett easily guides the reader through the first two novels, as they are integral to the plot of this one. The "narrator" is podcast host Jeffrey, whose podcast reveals the plot in episodic format.
He begins by describing himself in retrospect as a tortured soul suffering loss, loneliness, and in a self-medicating despair. Yet, he finds love online with an ostensibly "perfect" girl, Pilar, who similarly falls for him. They develop a rapport that begins to draw him from his haze of melancholy and weed. However, like all self-destructive, substance abusing shut-ins, he blows it, and in a cruel and heartless way, so-much-so, that I decided I hated him and wasn't sure I wanted to finish reading. (Burnett writes "asshole" with aplomb--Read his other novels and you'll agree).
Nevertheless, I persisted (Ha! :), and soon Jeffrey redeems himself by realizing what a complete and utterly merciless dick he has been to Pilar (Oy, it's BAAAD), tries his best to recant, redeem, redress his act, but Pilar will not forgive him. To atone, he gets his sh*t together and begins to put his life back together. He knows he will not find happiness with any woman or in life itself unless he feels deserving of it.
Then Pilar sends him a 17-page typed letter describing the murder of her best friend Megan, who, like Elle in ANOTHER GIRL has become obsessed with Katiekampenfelt.com, is conviced Katie is real, and has this confirmed when she reaches out to "Katie," is messaged back by "Katie" and develops a close friendship. However, like Elle et.al (Second Novel), when she goes to meet "Katie," she turns up dead.
Pilar is desperate to solve this crime/mystery. Jeffrey desperately wants Pilar back, and is simultaneously intrigued by this murder, and sets about to solve it.
The rest of the novel is his doing just that. Jeffrey is clever, cunning, and uses his creepy cyber knowlege and creativity for a good cause this time instead of callous tests of loyalty.
The end is surprising and somewhat abrupt, but what is interesting is the self-insertion of the author as a character--not that that is out of line--since it is a book and a character that these murdered girls have thought to be real. I mean, how could Burnett not make at the very least a cameo appearance?
Anyway, I really loved this novel. I think you will, too.
November 20, 2023
An excellent end to a carefully made trilogy that keeps you guessing until the final pages.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews