charlottesteggz

if you pick this book up, read the flap and the blurbs, you would think this is a book about what happens when you turn 16, become legal and a "sex-teen". in reality, that is the smallest part of the plot. (the world building is also really . . . not there, and the whole calling forms of transportation "trannie" REALLY threw me for the first half of the book until i figured it out. i kept think of transgendered people.) when you turn 16 in this future chicago, you get a tattoo on your wrist that deems you legal. there are a lot of issues the book could have dealt with regarding the rights of women vs. the rights of men, how the fathers have the right to choose what happens when the woman is pregnant, how apparently, group rape is all too common. there's also the "caste" system that was set up that was touched upon, but never really explained (why were people put in different tiers? what did those tiers represent?) except that top tiers rarely married below their own tier. this book is a fast-paced teenage psychological thriller/mystery. in a world where the GC (governing council) runs the americas and the moon, they strive to get individuals not to think for themselves. there are "verts" for everything you need and everything you don't need everywhere, so much that the resistance (NonCons) rebel by causing moments of silence. (The author admits that 1984 was a big influence, but i just have to say, big brother totally owns the GC.) the book opens with nina talking to her best friend, sandy. sandy has bought into the world of the GC. nina's mother has taught her differently, and nina doesn't really want to have sex, or date. she has friends who are boys, and that's how she likes it. ginnie (nina's mother) goes out one night, leaving nina in charge of her half-sister, dee. but ginnie doesn't come home. stabbed in an alley and left to die, nina and dee get 5 minutes with her before she dies. ginnie tells nina two things: be careful of ed (dee's father), and that nina's father, alan, is alive and needs dee's baby book. nina and dee move to chicago with her grandparents. ed is still around. the girls go back to the school they used to go to before moving to the burbs, and nina rejoins friends mike and derek, makes new ones in sal and wei. is alan oberon actually alive? what is in dee's baby book that is so important? how can nina keep dee safe - and herself? what is the FeLS program actually about, and why was ginnie so against nina joining? what is going on with the rise in NonCon activity? why does everyone react strangely to nina's last name? what does it mean to fall in love? can you make yourself stop certain feelings? another dystopian book about the dangers of love (think Matched, Delirium, etc.) if it was packaged as a mystery, or "what happens when everything that you knew was true, isn't?", i think i would have liked it better. also, this had the potential to be a 600 page book, and because it wasn't, i felt like a lot of threads were dropped. i did kind of like the ambiguity of the ending, though i hear there's going to be a sequel? ;(

2023-06-01 08:36