4.5 stars Thank you Penguin for this ARC
Powerful, emotional, and quite frankly traumatizing, The Meadows is a queer dystopian novel I won't soon forget.
Eleanor has dreamed of being chosen for a speciality school her whole life, only the best of the best get accepted. What she finds at the school is the opposite of what she expected, and soon it's clear why every girl was chosen to attend.
The book is comprised mostly of flashbacks to Eleanor's time at the school, with moments from the present interspersed throughout. It's odd to say I found a book symbolizing conversion therapy, and having a lot of parallels with the The Handmaid's Tale so enjoyable, but I did. Oakes has a way of making you feel as suffocated and isolated as the characters, and at times I felt I was losing myself as much as Eleanor was. I think it's clear to see from just how much I wrote on this book, how much it made me think and has stuck in my brain.
I am so thankful the inclusion and discussion of racism was brought up. You really can't have a perfect uniform society, without people who don't match the ideal having to change themselves constantly. Sheila and her battle to retain her sense of self is symbolized by her hair, and her fight and the eventual events just killed me to read. The matrons are masters of quiet and insidious abuse. No raised hands, no torture, just a long and slow process where they slowly break and domesticate everyone's spirits. I'd almost classify this is a horror with how true to life it is, and how utterly terrifying it is to watch a slow torture. Because a the end of the day, that's what it was. Torture and abuse. Not the kind you think of when you read those words, the bruises left aren't noticeable. But the effects never go away, and we see Eleanor struggle with everything she went through years later. (As well as the other students) What's worse is that it is constantly framed as being a "choice". It's so ironic that a book where the society got rid of religion would so heavily still read like religious trauma. I am not nuanced enough to know why I feel that way, but I am sure someone smarter than me could figure out why I made those parallels. (It is basically a cult guys, join and conform, or die and be cast out, though they make it seem like a choice)
This quote gutted me when I read it, and I just can't stop thinking about it.
"Maybe for the ones who get good at pretending, it won't come out for years and years...Or they'll, quite without warning, walk into the ocean until their life disappears. And everyone will be stunned. And everyone will blink in perplexed anger. She was so happy. Always so happy." *
I feel the common response to someone who commits or attempts to commit suicide is always one of "but they seemed so happy, but they were always smiling, we had no idea!" When in reality if anyone had ever taken the time to know the person or look for more then two seconds past the surface, they would see the cracks and the sadness, and the pain. There is so much symbolism to found, particularly centering around homophobia, and how that makes us hate each other and ourselves. At the end of the day, all anyone ever wants is to be accepted, loved, and to be able to be themselves. (Poor Eleanor takes so long to get any of these!)
I really love this book (but Avery, why didn't you give it 5 stars?!), but for me I did have a few issues with the ending, and how the tone changed.

I'm always happy to see a book end on hope, and not retain that overwhelming sense of hopelessness sadness that comes with topics like these. For this one, I do find it almost too abrupt of a departure from the rest of the story. Everyone gets a happy ending (except Betty) and all end up saved, or finding their way through one of the doors. It almost felt like it was lacking the emotional impact, or the characters had too heavy of plot armor. I do think June should have been killed, or died from her wounds. At the very least I wish we had seen more characters face the brutal consequences that everyone is constantly afraid of. We even get told about prisons that torture subservients, yet never glimpse that. Every single character mentioned basically gets a happy ending. (Except Betty) It feels like once the end happened it was just a domino effect of "everything is going to be okay now!" In keeping with the tone of the book, I do think it would have had a greater emotional impact had it been more sad, yet still retained the note of hope for the majority of characters. It's odd that all of the book is stuck in my mind because I love it, but the ending I don't even dwell on because it isn't of consequence.

With the technology, there are a few pieces that I am a bit confused on still, or didn't quite understand.

Everyone is being watched and lives in fear, yet Eleanor has ample time to escape. She is literally able to walk around her hometown and just hang out for a few days. I know they mention the peacekeeper have left the area, but it doesn't make sense for how she was able to be so subservient when she was in the city still. If the algorithm is able to detect and know when the people are queer or not, wouldn't it be able to pick up on her erratic behavior? She literally asks the matches to see pseudo Rose, which considering her backstory and file should have been a red flag immediately, and had security on her. There are men who constantly watched everything the students did at The Meadows, they would have known about her and Rose. If anything with the heart racing and eye contact, they would have realized Eleanor still had feelings for her. Technology in this book seemed to be used to explain a lot when convenient, then left us with plot holes for how much it was used to gloss everything over. I will say the argument can be made that society itself was responsible for much of the imposed rules and punishment, and the big bad guys in charge really were just symbolism for how we view each other and that internalized homophobia.
Touching on that, I do wish we got to see more of who was actually in charge, and responsible for all of the ongoing cruelty. (Again I understand how it could have just been less people then thought, and just a few loud voices which the public picked up, and the reality became society was punishing itself and there was no "big bad") Other then the obvious context clues of them being white men, I kinda wanted to know more. ALSO JUSTICE FOR THE POOR FROG! The symbolism there was excellent, though I sobbed like a baby.

I HIGHLY recommend this book, just please be kind to yourself and look at the content warnings first. (Always available on storygraph guys, don't forget!) This is my first book to read of Stephanie Oakes, and I must say I am hooked. I can't wait to read her others!
The cover is incredibly powerful, symbolic, and suits the book perfectly. On so many levels Eleanor didn't want to see her face, because she couldn't face herself and accept who she is. To see the painting that Rose did, albeit smeared, shows so much symbolism and conveys so much. I am always happy to see a book that does not try to sugar coat its contents, or pretend that the inside contains a happy rainbow sparkle world, when really it is covering depressing and traumatizing material. I would buy this book for the cover, and the content!
*Quote comes from an ARC of the book, and not the finished publication