Final rating : 3.5/5

Christina Dalcher is a raging TERF and her books are getting worse each time. This time it really shows though and it might finally be enough to stop me reading her books even ironically.

I love Dystopian fiction. Vox and Q are two of my favourite books so I was excited to start a new book by this author.

I am in two minds over this book however. I found it quite slow to get into and couldn't completely work out what was going on at first. There was some sort of economic crash leading to a post apocalyptic world but there are no details... The story is told by Miranda who along with her sixteen year old daughter Emma, is struggling to find food and survive. I found some of the scenes a bit disturbing to read at the start and one was particularly horrific.

Once I got to about a third of the way through the book I was gripped and couldn't put it down however. Miranda and Emma arrive at Femlandia, a commune founded on the hatred of men, purely for women. The community has huge electric barbed wire fences surrounding it but was this to keep people out or to keep the women inside? I was racing through the pages at this point. Was it really the idealic place that it seemed? What were the women hiding? There was clearly something sinister going on!

Although there is a clear resolution which I liked I found the ending slightly disappointing, a bit too predictable and slightly rushed.
Overall I loved the premise of the book but I found it didn't quite deliver in the same way as the previous two novels. I love Christina Dalcher's original ideas though so will definitely read her next book!

I felt eh about this. Someone else hit it on the nose in their review that the storytelling elements were just not there. What could have been so interesting about the story--the intricacies of how the group functions, glimpses into their food production, anything beyond mentioning they have a pool and a cafe (how do they keep their electricity?!)--wasn't there. It was all very black and white.

dystopian fiction about a near future where the protagonists are forced to seek refuge in a women’s commune. the text was easy and quick to read, and I finished the text within 24 hours. I have already read the author’s Vox, which I preferred, but can see now the author’s recurring plot points and focuses. This text was more shocking in comparison, and could have used a trigger warning as I chose to read this as it would be a bit of a lighter, less content-heavy text. The text only touched the surface on many issues, especially the role of transgenderism in the feminist movement, and the protagonist felt like a (white) saviour at times, who enjoys playing devil’s advocate - it felt like the author reflected herself in the protagonist too. the representation of trauma post-sexual assault felt very surface level and in fact forgotten quite quickly, which felt inauthentic. I would like to see more in-depth or diverse analysis of intersectional feminism in this author’s texts.

I didn't find this one as gripping as the others by this author. And found the plot vague and hard to understand at times. However it's was still a nice flowing and easy to read book and I enjoyed the ending