Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.24 AVERAGE
4.24 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
A nice little mysterious story about existence. The narrator of this audio book was magnificent, I really liked her voice.
The story itself is good, very low-key but still entertaining. The setting is interesting and unsettling. It reminded me of "The Cube" as well as similar movies, somehow. I like those stories, so I don't really mind getting no answers. That said, the world seemed to be set up very conveniently to keep our characters fed. This in combination with a few other things made me think that the answer to the mystery was "so the story can happen", which irked me a bit. But maybe I just lack imagination. As I said, I don't mind there being no answers in the story, but the author should know the answers and this world just feels like she doesn't.
Well, since I already started, here are my other complaints that prevented me from giving this book 5*:
- The author makes a point to say that there are no insects in the world, only to then describe there being insects multiple times after that. This isn't the only inconsistency.
- These women spend decades together in a community of 40 and only after TWENTY YEARS they start telling each other about themselves and their lives and backstory and whatnot. You can't make me believe that.
- They never give our protagonist a name??? Excuse me? Why not? What?!
- The women avoid explaining to the protagonist what sex is for decades because "What's the point?" But have no issue explaining jigsaw puzzles and other stupid shit. Made no sense to me. They can't all be puritanical stuck-ups.
Enough ranting. I still enjoyed it quite a bit.
The story itself is good, very low-key but still entertaining. The setting is interesting and unsettling. It reminded me of "The Cube" as well as similar movies, somehow. I like those stories, so I don't really mind getting no answers. That said, the world seemed to be set up very conveniently to keep our characters fed. This in combination with a few other things made me think that the answer to the mystery was "so the story can happen", which irked me a bit. But maybe I just lack imagination. As I said, I don't mind there being no answers in the story, but the author should know the answers and this world just feels like she doesn't.
Well, since I already started, here are my other complaints that prevented me from giving this book 5*:
- The author makes a point to say that there are no insects in the world, only to then describe there being insects multiple times after that. This isn't the only inconsistency.
- These women spend decades together in a community of 40 and only after TWENTY YEARS they start telling each other about themselves and their lives and backstory and whatnot. You can't make me believe that.
- They never give our protagonist a name??? Excuse me? Why not? What?!
- The women avoid explaining to the protagonist what sex is for decades because "What's the point?" But have no issue explaining jigsaw puzzles and other stupid shit. Made no sense to me. They can't all be puritanical stuck-ups.
Enough ranting. I still enjoyed it quite a bit.
adventurous
challenging
dark
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The concept is interesting; however, in front of such a worldbuilding, I would have liked to know more.
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
I understand why it ended like this, and it was also what I expected, but I couldn’t help but hope to learn a bit more. Despite that, I did enjoy reading this even though it gave me a pit in my stomach the whole way through. It’s very bleak and I deeply felt the sense of loneliness the whole way through. The continuous fake signals of hope, to waste your life counting heartbeats, minutes and days to conclude nothing out of it at all.
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I really wanted to like this book. The concepts were very appealing to me, but the writing was not and I did not find it believable or the main character likeable. This book would be more interesting with a political aspect to the prison or some context as to why 40 women were held without their consent by male prison guards. There were also men held in prisons (supposedly) nearby, although the entire book gave me the feeling the women were an ant farm being observed and it was a controlled experiment and the whole environment was being controlled by an outside force. The world of only women is collaborative but not in the ways I pictured. Sex and puberty seems to be made overly important when the sociology aspect would have been more interesting. Medicine and mercy killings were slso weird to me in s society of all women. This was written by a woman but has the feel that she is ghostwriting as a man or for a male audience.