A review by bookph1le
Yours for the Taking by Gabrielle Korn

3.0

3.5 stars

There are a lot of good ideas in this book, and it does an excellent job of dissecting white feminism, as well as the idea that any form of governance that prioritizes the rights and needs of a specific group is bound to be a failure for anyone who isn't part of that group.

However, I did think this had some rough edges, and I wasn't a big fan of the ending. Some specifics about why I didn't like the ending behind the tag.

Spoiler

To sum it up, I felt the tone of the ending did not match the tone of the rest of the book. It's not that I wanted the ending to be dour and terrible, but everything was resolved so neatly and the whole thing between Orchid and Ava felt like it was coming from an epic romance novel rather than this novel. Plus, it seemed to weird to me that July and the others from the space shuttle end up in an Inside, yet July's story was resolved in a way that seemed...okay? Didn't the book spend a good amount of time talking about how horrific the other Insides were, and how they were big, lawless, rape factories? Maybe this was what Jacqueline told Olympia just to make her Inside seem better, but if that's the case, it really wasn't clear to me. And lastly, maybe I'm good at holding grudges or something, but it seemed to me that a lot of characters were quickly forgiven for things they maybe shouldn't have been forgiven for. I'm thinking specifically of the way Ava forgives Olympia and the way July forgives Jacqueline.