A review by alexture
Yours for the Taking by Gabrielle Korn

3.75

I find too many dystopias boring because of their focus on very normal people.

This one doesn't really fit the general model, if only because everyone's extremely queer. Even though the premise is extremely basic, and the plot twists are overdone, there are a couple of very interesting characters who breathe just enough life into this novel to make it worth reading, in my opinion.

What I liked:

• Unlikeable characters, but also, I wouldn't do any better than them.
• The setting: as I said, it's basic, but there's a reason why it's been done so much. It just works.
• Lesbians.

What I liked less:

• Sometimes the novel felt like a pamphlet when it came to the not all men are bad, not all women can have babies, trans women are women, etc. I think the story was enough on its own for all these themes and it didn't need the monologues to drive the point home.
• It was a smooth read but also maybe a bit too smooth - what happened?
• Uninteresting characters, and yet I wanted to know what would happen to them.

It's hard to know if it was a good book. I'm going to say it was nice to have something so conventional and yet so queer, because that's still rare, but that's about it.