Review: Only Ever Yours by Louise O’Neill

Only Ever Yours by Louise O’Neill

Publisher: Quercus
Publication date: 2nd July 2015
Buy Links: Amazon UK
Source: I have received this book via The Ninja Book Swap

Synopsis

frieda and isabel have been best friends their whole lives.

Now, aged sixteen and in their final year at the School, they expect to be selected as companions – wives to wealthy and powerful men. The alternative – life as a concubine – is too horrible to contemplate.

But as the intensity of the final year takes hold, the pressure to remain perfect becomes almost unbearable. isabel starts to self-destruct, putting her beauty – her only asset – in peril.

And then, the boy arrive, eager to choose a bride.

frieda must fight for her future – even if it means betraying the only friend, the only love, she has ever known…

My thoughts

Wow – I don’t know where to start with writing my review on this… I found this a heavy book to read and finish, it took me longer than normal as I needed breaks in between to let the story sink in. It is a Dystopian, but most of it fits in the society we have right now when it comes to ‘beauty’.

The girls are bred to serve men in three different purposes, to be either a Companion, a Concubine or a Chastity. From the age of 4 they are put in a school, although sounds more like a prison, and they are being bred and have to follow rules to get them ready for their ceremony day when they turn 17. There are daily fights and struggles with food, calories, beauty and of course weight. They rank each other and always picks out each other flaws on a day to day basis and there are even special classes for it.
They don’t see any boys till a couple of months before their ceremony – these boys will choose an eve (the girls) for their liking and those women who are companions will bear as many sons as their womb can take them and then they get cast away when they are 40. When the boys are here you will have the weird ranking but then also done by the boys and you will have the ‘Heavenly Seventy’ where the girl is put in a closet with a boy who has chosen her.

It took me a little while to get into the story, because I wasn’t prepared for the shock of how it started. The situation for the girls starts of bad and gradually gets worse. And when you think it can’t get worse…. it will!

I loved reading about Isabel and Freida – note that all women names are written in lower case and not in capital because they don’t mean anything in life – they are worthless.
Such a shockingly honest book – one that will stay with me for a long time. I can definitely recommend this book to people, but there is a lot of worrying stuff in it about weight, food and vomiting…

Definitely go read this book and I can’t wait for Louise O’Neill’s next book which is coming out in September called: ‘Asking for it’. Another quite controversial read I think.

Cover Reveal: Fluence by Stephen Oram

FLUENCE 

Ten thousand minutes and counting 

By Stephen Oram 

 

Genre: Dystopian  

Published by Silverwood Books 

Amber is young and ambitious. Martin is burnt out by years of struggling. She cheats to get what she wants while he barely clings on to what he has. It’s the week before the annual Pay Day when strata positions are decided by the controlling corporations. The social media feed is frenetic with people trying to boost their influence rating while those above the strata and those who’ve opted out pursue their own manipulative goals.

Fluence is a story of aspiration and desperation and of power seen and unseen. It’s a story of control and consequence. It’s the story of the extremes to which Amber and Martin are prepared to go in these last ten thousand minutes before Pay Day.

BUY LINK

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fluence-Stephen-Oram/dp/1781323631

ABOUT STEPHEN ORAM

Like each and every one of us, my perspective of the world has been affected by many people and experiences: as a teenager I was heavily influenced by the ethos of punk; in my early twenties I embraced the squatter scene and then joined a religious cult, briefly; I did some computer stuff in what became London’s silicon roundabout; and I’m now a civil servant with a gentle attraction to anarchism. I really enjoy taking a sideways look at our world and thinking, “what if,” and then writing about it through speculative fiction.

https://www.facebook.com/StephenOramAuthor

https://twitter.com/OramStephen

www.stephenoram.net

http://stephenoram.net/fluence/

http://stephenoram.net/fluence/#alerts

Book Review: Ignite Me (Shatter Me #3)

Ignite Me is part of a trilogy Shatter Me written by Tahereh Mafi – This is book #3, the final book in this awesome trilogy!

The heart-stopping conclusion to the New York Times bestselling Shatter Me series, which Ransom Riggs, bestselling author of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, called “a thrilling, high-stakes saga of self-discovery and forbidden love.”
With Omega Point destroyed, Juliette doesn’t know if the rebels, her friends, or even Adam are alive. But that won’t keep her from trying to take down The Reestablishment once and for all. Now she must rely on Warner, the handsome commander of Sector 45. The one person she never thought she could trust. The same person who saved her life. He promises to help Juliette master her powers and save their dying world . . . but that’s not all he wants with her.
The Shatter Me series is perfect for fans who crave action-packed young adult novels with tantalizing romance like Divergent by Veronica Roth, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, and Legend by Marie Lu. Tahereh Mafi has created a captivating and original story that combines the best of dystopian and paranormal, and was praised by Publishers Weekly as “a gripping read from an author who’s not afraid to take risks.” Now this final book brings the series to a shocking and satisfying end.

Book Review: Unravel Me (Shatter Me #2)

Unravel Me is part of the Shatter Me trilogy written by Tahereh Mafi – This is book #2.

tick
tick
tick
tick
tick
it’s almost
time for war.
Juliette has escaped to Omega Point. It is a place for people like her—people with gifts—and it is also the headquarters of the rebel resistance.
She’s finally free from The Reestablishment, free from their plan to use her as a weapon, and free to love Adam. But Juliette will never be free from her lethal touch.
Or from Warner, who wants Juliette more than she ever thought possible.
In this exhilarating sequel to Shatter Me, Juliette has to make life-changing decisions between what she wants and what she thinks is right. Decisions that might involve choosing between her heart—and Adam’s life.

Book Review: Shatter Me (Shatter Me #1)

Shatter Me is part of a trilogy written by Tahereh Mafi – This is book #1 of this amazing trilogy.

Juliette hasn’t touched anyone in exactly 264 days.
The last time she did, it was an accident, but The Reestablishment locked her up for murder. No one knows why Juliette’s touch is fatal. As long as she doesn’t hurt anyone else, no one really cares. The world is too busy crumbling to pieces to pay attention to a 17-year-old girl. Diseases are destroying the population, food is hard to find, birds don’t fly anymore, and the clouds are the wrong color.
The Reestablishment said their way was the only way to fix things, so they threw Juliette in a cell. Now so many people are dead that the survivors are whispering war– and The Reestablishment has changed its mind. Maybe Juliette is more than a tortured soul stuffed into a poisonous body. Maybe she’s exactly what they need right now.
Juliette has to make a choice:
Be a weapon. Or be a warrior.
In this electrifying debut, Tahereh Mafi presents a world as riveting as The Hunger Games and a superhero story as thrilling as The X-Men. Full of pulse-pounding romance, intoxicating villainy, and high-stakes choices, Shatter Me is a fresh and original dystopian novel with a paranormal twist that will leave readers anxiously awaiting its sequel.