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    VOX
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    VOX
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    VOX
    Audiobook10 hours

    VOX

    Written by Christina Dalcher

    Narrated by Laurence Bouvard

    3.5/5

    ()

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    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    ‘Intelligent, suspenseful, provocative, and intensely disturbing – everything a great novel should be’ LEE CHILD

    ‘Extraordinary’ LOUISE O’NEILL
    ‘A truly compulsive novel.’ STYLIST

    ‘The book of the moment!’ MARIE CLAIRE

    ‘This book will blow your mind’ PRIMA

    ‘A petrifying reimagining of The Handmaid’s Tale’ ELLE

    ‘A fast-paced, twisting thriller that left me speechless.’ DAILY MAIL

    ‘Terrifying’ RED

    ‘A novel ripe for the #MeToo era’ VANITY FAIR

    ‘A dazzling debut.’ GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

    ‘Thought-provoking and thrilling. I was left speechless!’ WOMAN & HOME

    Silence can be deafening.

    Jean McClellan spends her time in almost complete silence, limited to just one hundred words a day. Any more, and a thousand volts of electricity will course through her veins.

    Now the new government is in power, everything has changed. But only if you’re a woman.

    Almost overnight, bank accounts are frozen, passports are taken away and seventy million women lose their jobs. Even more terrifyingly, young girls are no longer taught to read or write.

    For herself, her daughter, and for every woman silenced, Jean will reclaim her voice. This is only the beginning…

    [100 WORD LIMIT REACHED]

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
    Release dateAug 21, 2018
    ISBN9780008300661
    Unavailable
    VOX
    Author

    Christina Dalcher

    Christina Dalcher is the Sunday Times bestselling author of VOX. She earned her doctorate in theoretical linguistics from Georgetown University, specializing in the phonetics of sound change in Italian and British dialects. She and her husband split their time between the American South and Naples, Italy.

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    Reviews for VOX

    3.5/5

    621 ratings65 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 3/5
      It's ok. The ending is very rushed, but the premise is interesting
    • 3/5
      Loved the book but the audio book was hard to listen to. A low rumbling sound every time the narrator talked made it hard to concentrate and actually gave me a head ache very quickly. Probably a technical issue but very frustrating.
    • 3/5
      This review might be just me. Since this is not what I normally read. I did enjoy this one I just did not love it. In some way I can relate to Dr. Jean McClellan. I do not mix well with political issues until it is to late.

      The book was well written and the chapters was short which I liked.

      The Plot was very much a near future dystopian where everything is just hardcore Anti-females But it was a lot of science and well I don't do science.

      The character's was just bleh. I did not connect with the MC at all. It was mostly just explaining how much regret there was but I was completely bored with the character most of the time and the reasons why she cheated and hated her husband felt just wrong.

      When I finished the book I did not know how to feel. Everything was all over the place and it felt extremely rushed in the end. I didn't grasp the ending or what they had planned and I was completely lost.
    • 5/5
      Outstandingly and gut wrenchingly horrid, could barely talk all day! A worse dystopia than handmaids tale, but not as horrid as the terrifying Orchard Garden. I suggest this is only for the strong minded. Mostly there are real complex characters, though sadly a few are endlessly narrow: but maybe some people are narrowly horrid. The too real scenarios and excellent take home lessons make this a must read.
    • 5/5
      4.5 rounded up. I blew through this book. The first half was so intense, at one point I had to put it down so I could relax. The atmosphere created is just really enthralling - hopeless, angry, stark, powerless.... Full on five star, all the way. The last thirty or so pages felt less epic, for want of a better word, than the preceding. More individual thriller compared to the society-wide dystopia of the beginning. I wonder if it might be more effective and keep the same punch-level throughout if they weren't able to save the day and things progressed through the completely oppressing desired end. That might have had the end be as impactful as the first three-quarters.

      A few quibbles. There were a few weird turns of phrase that took me out of the moment (though it was easy to get back into it). "Oil-drop eyes" was used twice which is at least two times too many. Also, "black tears" of brewing coffee made me roll my eyes. Dramatic much? And the climax was a tad weird. The whole coming-out-of-sedation thing was confusing. When drilling a hole in a potentially violent subject, wouldn't you want to keep the anesthesia going until you are done and ready for them to wake up? I mean, I'm pretty sure my vet even does that for my cat when they are having their teeth cleaned. Also, a syringe to the neck is not near as intimidating as a knife. And what would have been the point of doing the surgery on Morgan? Other than just vengeance, it wouldn't help their situation at all. But in situations like this where I am enjoying something, I find it is better to just keep going and try to ignore any plot holes until the end.

      Anyway, I enjoyed the first half the most (6 stars, amazing) and the end let me down just the tiniest bit (more 4 star) but still a good book that I enjoyed reading and brought up some good things to think about.
    • 5/5
      If you liked the Handmaid's Tale you will enjoy this book. Very though provoking and believable in today's political climate.
    • 4/5
      Good concept. I had to fight to keep going in places but I’m glad I did.
    • 5/5
      Gotta say, I really enjoyed this book. It makes you think of where we are leaning forward, as a western societies, during the last few years. Also I felt particularly involved...being a southern Italian!
    • 5/5
      Christina definitely knows how to make your blood boil! The emotions you experience while you read is incredibly strong! It is so easy to imagine that this could be reality and this is making the anger and fear step in. Amazing book!
    • 3/5
      Interesting premise, heavy-handed execution. I loathed the whole "Lorenzo" part of the story. The resolution was too easy.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      The premise is intriguing, and I tend to “enjoy” or at least appreciate dystopian fiction. In this case, the right-wing US government is limiting women to 100 words per day. The problem here, for me, is that the storyline is all over the place, with superfluous side characters and many digressions into topics that have nothing to do with the main theme. It found it disjointed and thus, it was difficult to develop an intensity of feelings for the characters. I had so many questions that were not touched upon in any depth. I was hoping for a more analytical exploration of the silencing of women, but it devolves into melodrama and stereotypes. Plus, I was annoyed by the inclusion of an unnecessary romance. I think it is an important and relevant topic, but I will file this one under “good idea, poor execution.”

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      In the same vein as A handmaid's Tale, Vox is the story of a dystopian America where the female population is oppressed after a newly elected president and his cronies take steps to bring back the old days when women had no rights. Women are no longer allowed to work outside the home. They can still drive, and go to the grocery store, they can still care for their children, but they are allotted only 100 words per day and there is severe punishment should they speak more than that. They can not read, even instructions from their own doctors will be sealed in an envelope addressed to their husbands. Mail is also only for husbands. Children still attend school but with drastic differences for boys and girls. There is punishment for sex before marriage, and outside of marriage, and for being homosexual. As Jean tries to do what she can to raise her children under such circumstances, she becomes aware that there is an even more sinister plan in the works. With the current divisiveness in the states this was certainly a timely read.

      4 out of 5 stars

      I received an advance copy for review.
    • 1/5
      Wants to be The Handmaid's Tale so badly that it becomes a laughably inept imitation.

      I should have known the moment I cracked open my Kindle and this book was in first person present tense, with a monotone narrator. In THT, it turns out this is because our narrator is experiencing PTSD from being forced into ritualized rape with the purpose of turning her into a living incubator, under threat of torture and death. That's some serious shit.

      In Vox, it's clear the author wants us to see that Jean is experiencing a similar shock reaction to her own admittedly horrific captivity of enforced silence under threat of torture and death yadda yadda. But it doesn't work. Atwood makes us feel the nameless narrator's horrors viscerally. In Vox, we understand the horror, but its depths never really horrify enough, even though they should.

      That may be in part due to the stupidest choice the author makes: a 100% happy fucking ending. Its not even bittersweet, because the book kills off its only complex character so that Jean and Lorenzo can be together. And it rescues everyone important to Jean and everyone she thought would be dead. Yay! They're all alive and back from the salt mines, none the worse for wear!

      Gag me with a spoon.

      Let's list the things the author ripped off from THT, at least the ones I remember off the top of my head, since I'm typing on a phone

      1. Christian right wing extremist revolution with fascist implementation of extremist values such as strict patriarchy and an emphasis on marriage, babies, and women's silence.

      2. Dissenters and LGBT are sent off to inhospitable wastelands for hard labor, as are unmarried women with no family to live with.

      3. The Resistance, and the narrator accidentally falling into it.

      4. Having a lover on the side for dangerous trysts.

      5. Jackie = Moira. Straight ripoff. Entire character and storyline.

      6. Sneaking and breaking into the man of the house's papers and secrets.

      Meh. And the plot...feck it goes off the rails. It could have been so interesting. But author glosses over so many details to the point that I just finished the book and I have no idea how or why the climax went the way it did. Like who had what vial/serum at what time and how they got it, etc.

      And Jean's mom suffering the same exact brain injury at the same time? In the end, that meant NOTHING. It didn't affect Jean's behavior or decisions at all. So I thought it would be a straight up plot device, like the Bad Guys had intentionally poisoned Jean's mom to make sure Jean would work for them. Nope. Just a coinkydink! Sigh. Fiction does not have coincidences without a reason.

      Another time, her teenage son Steven rats out his girlfriend to the Gestapo for sleeping with him and gets her sent to zero words hard labor for life. Smooth move, ex lax. Jean's reaction? Basically nothing. Dude, your son just became a fucking monster, and you CAN yell at him without punishment because you're working on this top secret serum, but she does basically nothing...and Steven comes back from evil by the end of the book...somehow. Its not made clear. Oh, and he's almost a straight ripoff from The Sound of Music. But worse, because he sleeps with his girlfriend and then TURNS HER IN FOR IT. But don't worry; she's magically back at the end of the book! Yay!

      Ugh. At least Atwood's protagonist was an unreliable narrator and we can forgive some of the weirdness. But we are not given any reason to think Jean is an unreliable narrator. She's just flat, like every other character. And like this book.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      Where are the decent writers? I have died and gone to a literary pit of hell. I started reading this book expecting a dystopian. I love the feeling and question of “what if this or that happen to our society how our communities will end up?" That part of the Dystopian stories is what keep me coming back to the genre, but this book made me want to scream and toss the book in the pool. WHY? I'll tell you why.

      I am giving major Spoilers, so stop reading right here because the ranting starts here. I am a pissed off Latina, Combat Veteran, Feminist, Woman, who happens to LOVE men and live Christianity. I do not practice Christianity. I live it. I do not review books for grammar, punctuation, or POV, but I do for plot, characters, and style.
      Having said that.

      Bless her heart, what was this woman thinking? This plot was so rushed I did not have time to fall in love with any of the characters. Dr. Jean McClellan hates her husband and her three sons. Lord have mercy; why would a mother hate her sons? Even Ted Bundy’s Mom loves that thing that called himself human. She has one daughter. Okay, the girl is the favorite child, I can understand that, but there is something unhealthy about this woman’s hatred to her sons. That did not sit well with me.

      I could not relate to this mentally wavering basket case of a woman, who is supposed to be the main character without a proper character arc. It took me forever to read this nightmare of a book. This book was rushed, and things were not explained. Things happened without logic to them, and she used Christianity entirely out of context. She did not do any research on what the faith is all about. And I am not referring to the cults that only has a few hundred followers. The real faith will not let the cults stand and harm innocent people. Or haven’t most individual noticed that a good number of Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen are people of faith, Catholic, Protestants, Muslims, Buddhists, and so on and even atheist stand next to us and are respectful to our faith and we are back to them when we serve our country.

      Anyway, but what burned my environmentalist biscuits were all the unnecessary side plots about animal and drug testing. Then there were all these endless secondary characters, needed for Jean that fittingly just appeared at the last minute and did the miracle rescued. There were no cameras in the detention facility. Obviously, the woman did not do any research on what happens inside a detention facility. She did not research what happened during a Bio-terrorism threat. Yes, some of us readers are well versed on what happened in a detention facility and during a bioterrorist threat. I am a retired Army Officer. So, before you start throwing stones, do the research, because I do know what I am talking about in these cases.
      And lets not even mentioned an eyry familiarity with a President formally known as the one that said, “You are fired,” and then I said, “You have got to be kidding, can’t you be more unoriginal.” I wanted, I needed, I expected someone worse than President Snow from The Hunger Games or Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones if you are going to create a world this F- up to women. Which by the way, I did not buy it, but at least I wanted a redeeming quality terrible villain. At least give me a real bad guy, but no such luck. I got cheated.

      And I wanted to cry because I got suckered into thinking this was going to be a good read and it wasn’t.
    • 3/5
      Gagging Women

      Vox is such a good idea, such a powerful metaphor for keeping women in their place, for male dominance at any cost, that you wish a stronger writer had rendered the tale. Dalcher has done a decent, if pedestrian, job of telling the story. However, how she has structured the plot limits the new world in which women have been essentially removed from the day-to-day of society and crippled with a wristband that allows them just one hundred words per twenty-fours hours before shocking them into insensibility. Oh yes, very Pavlovian of the ruling males who impose radical right Christian pentecostal doctrine as the law of the land. This aspect of the novel is probably why blurb writers bring up comparisons to The Handmaid’s Tale. And therein is what many may find lacking in this novel, that it doesn’t really paint a full, horrifying, and enraging portrait of new society, something making The Handmaid’s Tale so satisfying.

      Dr. Jean McClellan is a research linguist who before the change of regime and government in the U.S. was working on and near to finding a medical solution to Werniche (receptive) aphasia (loss of ability to turn thoughts into sensible speech). She’s the mother of four, the youngest a girl. Her husband is a physician working for the White House. Her oldest son, a high school student, gets sucked into the overarching movement now controlling the country, Pure, the inspiration of the chief counselor to the president, a man who spouts Christian doctrine while imposing his brand of restrictions on society. To her credit, Dalcher provides glimpses of the Pure new order, which many readers wish she had fleshed out and explored in more detail.

      Instead of balancing plot and context, she launches full bore into a government scheme to silence women and others the Pure leaders hate, LGBTQs and pretty much anybody else who doesn’t toe the mark of Biblical family and societal structure distilled into pure repressiveness, even at the cost of a well functioning and growing social and commercial world. So, what readers have is McClellan and her band of researchers being enlisted forcibly into government research with the end result being nefarious. Along the way, she reunites with her lover, also a scientist, and discovers she’s pregnant with his child. Some may enjoy this excursion into romance on the side, while others will find it compounds the novel’s chasing around tediousness.

      Most disappointing about the novel is that it could have been so much more. Not a bad read, but not essential if you are looking for novels about the repression and control of women by men, or religious dictatorships, or self-destructive societies. In that case, if you hadn’t already done so, you’ll want to read the grandma of this dystopian subgenre, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
    • 3/5
      Very scary but interesting concept for a dystopian book, but I feel story line was underdeveloped, I would have loved to have read more about the Society was. I did not feel connected to the characters except for Jean. This book should have been at least 700 pages long to fully develop the story
    • 1/5
      I hated this book. It was trying much too hard to be a contemporary Handmaid's Tale, and it failed. I was hating it 50 pages in, and finished it out of rage and spite. I'm only glad I did because the ending was so bad that it justified every ounce of anger.

      Spoilers abound from here on, because I do not care.

      Let me say, right off, that I am a Northern, non-Christian feminist, so I am not offended by Christian villains. I am offended by cardboard cutout cartoon super-villainy that, if I called it subtle as a sledgehammer, would be an insult to sledgehammers. The central conceit of the novel is that, at an unspecified time not entirely unlike our own, religious zealots have taken over the US. Their means of controlling women? Literally taking away our voice. Women and girls are forbidden to read or write, or to speak more than 100 words a day. A wrist counter monitors their speech and delivers increasingly strong levels of electric shocks when the limit is exceeded.

      Apparently, the whole thing sneaked up on the US while it slept. Women just gradually stopped being elected to government, and then BOOM! Religion creeps up from the horrible South and takes over with enforced purity. On with the wrist bracelets and being fired from work. Here is where I'll compare it unfavorably to The Handmaid's Tale: as improbable as that scenario seemed, Atwood realistically portrayed it as a mess, with a coup and a civil war. Here, an elected government just uses its own powers, storming over the "resistance" (Familiar?) and... that's it. There are camps, of course, and arrests, but mostly, life goes on. Kids go to school, except now the girls only learn to count. (The ways in which literacy impact housework always seem to be ignored in these books.) This couldn't possibly be a heavy handed allusion to our current state, of course.

      The main character, Jean, is a language researcher now stuck at home. Her husband is a science adviser to the new government. I enjoy unsympathetic characters, but the McClellans tend towards the whiny, the type you want to punch in the face. Prior to the wrist bracelets, their insufferable son Steven starts picking up misogyny in school. Instead of cutting it off at the knees, Jean and Patrick let it go, till later Steven is the obvious Hitler Youth of the family, warning them that soon nonverbal communication would be monitored. The characters do, at least, smarten up some in the middle part of the book.

      The implications of taking away language from women and girls, long term, don't seem to be fully realized. The relationship between Jean and her young daughter Sonia is correctly portrayed as suffering, but (especially for a novel written by a linguist) the long term effects of depriving women not just of a voice, but of language and nonverbal communication, don't seem to have been considered much.

      Anyway, miracles! Jean is needed to do special research for the government and gets her bracelet taken off--and bargains to get Sonia's taken off too. Now we see some resistance to tyranny, as represented by an impossibly assholish minister and the aforementioned smarmy son. Surprise! the research isn't entirely what it pretends to be (I worked out the secret plan before it was revealed. Research works improbably fast, even when aided by the secret that Jean had mostly cracked it before being fired. As a novel, this part works the best; there's plot and character development, and it moves briskly and is written well.

      And what happens? A man saves the whole fucking thing in a noble act of self sacrifice. Jean swans off to Italy with the kids and her Italian lovah. Apparently the US wakes up after they're gone, and I guess we're all just sheeple who easily fall in and out of a spell, but who really cares? I wish I were making up this ending.

      All told, I just couldn't achieve the suspension of disbelief necessary. I get where Dalcher was coming from, but it never really gelled for me and there were too many convenient developments (OF COURSE her mailman is a secret resister, et cetera. I get why these things have to be to make the plot work, but the McClellans are just the perfect nexus of every component.)
    • 4/5
      I can’t say that I totally loved this book but I didn’t hate it either. It definitely had some aspects of the other dystopian novels out there now, but I enjoyed the few unique ideas. Imagining a world such as the one in this book is a bit scary, especially as women.
      That said, I read for enjoyment and if I learn something along the way even better. I’ve read a lot of controversial reviews about this book. I try to take it for what it is and not read too much into a fictional novel. As with everything we’re all entitled to our own opinions.
    • 2/5
      The story hits a particular nerve with the subject matter, however, the ending of the book felt so unbelievable and rushed that it cheapened the story a bit.
    • 3/5
      I couldn't get through this on paper, but Julia Whelan improved it enough for me to finish on audio.
    • 4/5
      In the near future women can only speak 100 words per day - would you be able to survive? An explosive debut novel! Looking forward to Dalcher's next book!

      Thanks to NetGalley for an eARC copy.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this dystopian tale about women being limited to 100 words a day because of a counter on their wrists. Ironically, in the ending it’s a man who saves them.
    • 2/5
      Nah. Didn't work for me. However, that's not totally the author's fault. This is one of those genres that only allows for so much before virtually all similar books are simply redundant. Example: vampires. After establishing Dracula and after the cinematic interpretations (or misinterpretations) such as Nosferatu and other very famous vampires, not much else was done or seemed very new -- until Anne Rice's groundbreaking 1976 novel, Interview With The Vampire. That literally was a ground breaker. But then what happened? She produced more, a series, and understandably so, but many feel each new piece in the series got weaker, and then similar writers with similar types of vampires started appearing (and one, Poppy Brite, has been a friend of mine for decades, so I want to be careful about what I say, because while Poppy's characters and indeed her own life and hometown mirror Rice's very closely, I don't think it's fair to say she's Rice "Light" and I enjoy her books very much.) And then you started getting REAL creative license with everything from The Lost Boys to FF Coppola's cinematic version (which my best friend and I thought was so completely bad that we ticked off the entire theater by laughing our way through it -- I mean the dude from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures as a nineteenth British barrister??? It's little impossible to cast someone worse in that role. [However he more than redeemed himself in The Matrix!]The point is, this is not a bad book. In fact, I've read it twice now. I just don't feel that engaged or challenged or moved or intrigued or, frankly, impressed. I guess the book just felt like a revised and updated version of a Margaret Atwood novel, as well as hundreds of other similar novels. I have a number of friends who are professional writers who have published books very similar to this!!! And just like Ms. Dalcher, I think they're all fine writers. I just think the topic and category are very limited -- like my vampire analogy -- and you simply write yourself into a corner if you choose one of these limited areas. Which she did. Which is why it's not worth more than two stars. The problem is, you really need a new angle or protagonist or plot type or something to stand out from a crowded crowd now (with all of the self published "authors"), and there are areas that lend themselves to that and there are some that don't, including the two I just wrote about. The opposite of this dilemma, though, goes with the old saying, "Nothing new happens under the sun," which is also pretty true. So it's a double challenge. Not only a new angle in a familiar topic, but a new angle AT ALL is darned harder than hell, and frankly impossible for most. I'll include myself with that group in terms of my books, although I would assert a number of my published academic papers may be borderline groundbreaking. Ultimately, I just didn't enjoy this book, but I do think the author has talent and hope she's putting out other books that match her talent more effectively.
    • 4/5
      Pretty good and pretty scary! Like the Handmaid’s Tale, this story hits close to home and could become reality. Definitely worth the read.
    • 5/5
      Oh. My. Goodness.You must read this book.Enough said.
    • 5/5
      Holy crap. This book is terrifying. Especially in today's political climate. Doesn't feel so speculative so much as a glimpse into a possible future. I have already bought three copies and plan to hand them out to my friends.Women only have 100 words a day before the counter on their wrists begin to shock them per word. But why would they need more words than that? They can't work, only are schooled in the arts that they might need to take care of their families, or will work in a camp unless some male in their family can take them in. What could a woman possibly have to say that could be so important?
    • 3/5
      "Everything lately seems to be a choice between degrees of hate."

    • 1/5
      Christina Dalcher’s Vox has an intriguing, and some would say prophetic, premise. The main character and first-person narrator, Dr. Jean McClellan, lives in a society where women were silenced virtually overnight. Like all women in the US, she is now mandated to wear a bracelet, or counter, which delivers a series of electric shocks if she speaks over 100 words a day. Once a prominent scientist in her field, Jean now spends her days at home, catering to her family’s every need, and quietly seething as she reflects on how so many people, herself included, didn’t see this coming.

      Dystopian novels like George Orwell’s 1984 and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale became classics because they are nuanced. Everything from the characters to the propaganda is subtle enough to be believable. In Vox, the antagonists and their message are exaggerated to the extreme. All men are portrayed as either evil or passive. Most women are so defeated that they don’t fight back and many fully embrace the new roles that have been thrust upon them. Children parrot their new “traditional” schooling and report their own parents and fellow students if they don’t fall in line. Dalcher’s message is so heavy-handed that it becomes exhausting.

      The main plot of the novel is straightforward, if somewhat overly reliant on technical jargon. Unfortunately, the addition of numerous subplots, most of them ridiculous, detracts significantly from the story. Toss in a few predictable and thematically inappropriate twists, and you get a confusing hodgepodge of genres that don’t mesh well. Jean’s personality, which is shallow to begin with, contradicts itself in many of the new situations that arise. In the first few chapters, Dalcher highlights Jean’s intelligence and loyalty to her family, but as the story continues, Jean morphs into a completely different person. At the drop of a hat, she makes rash decisions that could put her entire family in danger, and her reasoning is explained poorly, if at all.

      Vox could have been a fascinating novel. It could have provided compelling reasons for the swift rise of the new patriarchy. Instead, it turns men and conservatives into villains, portraying them as inhuman monsters. While Dalcher never goes so far as to depict Jean and her fellow activists as perfect, their actions and principles are glorified. I write the following as a self-proclaimed feminist and liberal: the extreme thinking presented in this novel is what has caused such a huge rift in the United States. If more people would listen to other points of view without resorting to name-calling and bitter rhetoric, we would be a much healthier society. This may be too much to ask. At the very least, avoid books that encourage hate and division. Unfortunately, Vox is one of the worst offenders.

      Vox by Christina Dalcher will be released by Berkley Publishing on August 21st, 2018.

      Disclaimer: I received an Advanced Reader Copy of this novel from Goodreads Giveaways in exchange for an honest review.
    • 2/5
      This novel has a brilliant idea as its basis but the execution is really disappointing. What starts out as a horrifying dystopia for women turns into something more like Mills & Boon. I was very disappointed.
    • 3/5
      I really enjoyed the concept and I was excited to read this but it definitely was not everything I thought it was going to be. Great idea but not the greatest execution. I wish everything had been expanded on and more developed and it would have made a great novel.The characters were weak and I generally didn’t care about most of them, and the ones I did we didn’t get to learn much more about them at all and they ended up more as stick figures just acting in our plot without any actual substance or personality. Our main character, Jean, was one of the only ones who was truly really fleshed out throughout the entirety of the novel. Jean has four children, Sophia, Stephen, and two twin boys who were truly so useless to not only the novel but Jean’s life, that I can’t even remember their names and I only finished this book last week at the time of writing this. Some of our characters started off super strong and interesting and then completely diminished into dust near the end of the novel and it was disappointing. Lastly, we had quite a few characters who were so one-dimensional and flat that did a complete 180 by the end of the novel but without any visible development and it was absolutely jarring. They had no visible development. We just turned the page and found our one-dimensional character still very one dimensional just with a completely different set of morals and values and no explanation as to how or why they changed. Also, we really got the point that Lorenzo has a fancy coffee maker. We get it.The plot started off very strong but about 75% of the way through it just lost all steam and everything seemed rushed and smashed together, leaving nearly everything to the imagination. A vast majority of the issues and complaints and questions I have all come back to the last 25% of the novel. Prior to this point, I was reading and expecting a four star read but the ending was so sloppy it heavily effected my enjoyment of the novel.Mainly, I feel had everything been developed more, this could have been a FANTASTIC novel. That being said, I did give this book 3 stars and I really did enjoy the concept. I would recommend it, just go in with lower expectations.