Why hasn’t Netflix picked this up for adaptation yet?? This could be the new Squid Games.

The foundations of this book are upon the war between the two sides of abortion rights: pro life and pro choice. After the war, certain laws come into place which are the premise for this book. These laws are highly absurd. I feel as though the laws in the world could have made more sense had they been fleshed out further as to why they were created or surrounded by more world building. The world building in general is not very notable, with nothing more being of note besides legal changes, leaning it to be less of a sci-fi book than it seems.

Suspending that disbelief, it is an interesting commentary on what is life, why governments make the decisions they do, how education and religion form who we are, and more deep thoughts. However, the author never takes a clear side of the abortion rights discussion which can be disappointing for many readers.

Beyond high level concepts, Shusterman does a great job voicing the characters. I found the main character, Conner, to be the least interesting with his boring background and basic rebellious personality. However, Risa and Lev are very interesting and get a decent amount of coverage in the story (though I wish I had more of Lev, as some of his moments were the strongest, yet entire weeks were skipped). Even the antagonist had an interesting depth, though most of which was highlighted late in the book.

Finally, the story itself was very good. Quick pacing, great writing, and several Chekhov's guns (that you wouldn’t think were guns) that go off. All of that to say, this book is chaos neatly woven. It’s a great blend of fast pace moments and not knowing what is going to happen next, and slow thoughtful beats that make you take in the moment.

I highly recommend this to anyone over the age of 18 because let’s be real, some of those scenes were low-key traumatizing and it is not meant for the YA genre. 4.5 stars.