It's hard to rate this novel because though it made my skin crawl (and I guess it's what the author wanted) it was not because I was into this book. I loved Vox and Master Class by Christina Dalsher but this time it was really not for me.

After the collapse of the US, Miranda and her daughter, Emma, seek refuge in a "feminist" women-only colony. The colony, or more like a sect, was funded by Miranda's estranged mother and is fully self-sufficient so what happened in the rest of the country had no impact on the colony.

First warning, this "feminist" sect is actually misandre. My main issue with the novel is how much it lacks nuance. While I think the idea of this sect is fun, it bothers me that such a messed-up definition of feminism is conveyed. While it's stated that the colony is not what feminism is, Miranda, as the narrator is supposed to counteract, but since she is biased on so many aspects, she doesn't and no other character does either.
The book also lacks nuance on people, bad people are seen as only bad, and worst there's a very binary vision of gender. Yes, the colony is transphobe (trans people are mentioned for half a page) but again nothing is offered to show disagreement, and non-binary and intersex people are not even mentioned. Basically, what is told is that men are bad and whoever ever was a man is also bad, until that vision sort of switches to men are bad, women are also bad so everybody is bad, and whatever we do societies always turn bad. Okay, so what now?

That lack of nuance lies mainly in how everything is mostly depicted largely. No idea, why the US collapsed, it's only suggested but not enough to imagine anything close to a clear interpretation. We don't get to discover how the colony works as Miranda spends most of her time in isolation. She still has a bad vision of the colony because she is biased, but her daughter is easily converted. We have barely any argument to build an opinion against or for this colony because the narrator knows close to nothing about it before claiming it's bad. We only know the obviously awful elements but since women are staying there must be a good core or at the very least, they must be manipulated to stay. So this book overflows shocking scenes but without giving what connects the story, which would make everything relatable (in the way, we could feel empathy for the people indoctrinated because we could be them) or believable.

I like so much the main ideas of this book, a colony that claims itself to be a utopia but that turns out to be a cult, like in the movie Midsommar. But it lacks something to make it a good novel.

The weakest of the Dalcher books that I have read so far, but still interesting. A few times I wondered what the actual message was - coming from Vox I had assumed that Dalcher was writing from a feminist perspective, but this more than a few times seemed actually quite vehemently anti-woman. The main character seems quite traditional in her views and the main antagonist extremely feminist, I was a bit surprised reading the book as the overall tone seemed essentially to be arguing against the feminist cause.