Last Chance Live!

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. 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.

Helena Haywoode Henry is a mom of three and a former attorney living in the Raleigh-Durham area. Helena graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and from NYU School of Law. Last Chance Live! is her first novel.