badb_catha 's review for:

Before She Sleeps by Bina Shah

2.0

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This book is a mess, a wreck of good parts that don't function well together. Like most messes or wrecks, there are things to salvage here. But in all, to me the story doesn't cohere well, several of the characters just flat don't work, and one finds in several places paragraphs whose insights are contradicted and trivialized in the span of a few short sentences. I'm giving it 2.4 stars because I am a feminist and I think dystopian visions of the future, and what may happen to women who can reproduce - despite my sadness at the usual erroneous conflation, in these sorts of books, of the classes "women" and "women who can bear children" - are important to read, consider, and hopefully prevent or limit. I'd say it's worth reading, but don't expect to enjoy it, and don't succumb yourself to the idea that only women who can bear children are women.