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3.66 AVERAGE


This is only the second book I’ve read by this author, but I’m literally obsessed with her. This book was insane; it kept me on the edge of my seat and was written so, so beautifully. Wow. Going to start recommending this to people instead of The Handmaid’s Tale when they are looking for dystopian, feminist fiction.
adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced
Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Not my thing but some beautiful writing. Weird, hard to suspend my disbelief regarding the science, but compelling. I found myself wanting to know what happened at the end.
dark sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated
adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes

I’m not sure how I feel about this book. I feel like I need to read it again; I definitely want to discuss it with someone else who has read it. I started out telling the story of a pregnant woman meeting her birth parents, then turned into a dystopian nightmare that felt like a rip-off of The Handmaid’s Tale, then I could see the author was trying to create a metaphor for the story of the birth of Jesus, then....I don’t know what happened. I need to think about this one some more.

Feel like this book is perpetually knocking on the door of being better than it was. There’s some references to Christianity and religion and all these other things. But they all felt pretty lame and not very deep or well rounded. The allusions happen in such a superficial way that I found myself mostly confused, consistently deferring to the authors knowledge and waiting for a payoff at the end.

As such, I cruised through this book, pushing aside the frustration, hoping that the end would tie things together. But the ending let me down as the main characters arc and conclusion just kind of fizzled. There’s so many threads floating in the breeze at the end of this you could weave a quilt. The payoff is “oooo dystopia bad.” Spoiler I guess. Sorry if you’re reading this before the book. I have not ruined anything for you I promise.

Written as a diary to her unborn child she may never see, this is the dystopian tale of a pregnant young woman in a time when evolution is going backwards and the government wants to control all pregnant women. She reconnects with her Ojibwe birth family and discovers new things about other people in her lives. Thought-provoking, scary, probably would be a good discussion book.
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

2021 Book Riot Read Harder Challenge #5: Read a genre novel by an Indigenous, First Nations, or Native American author