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lizbethandthelifeinbetween 's review for:
Athena's Choice
by Adam Boostrom
2.5
I received an ARC via BookSirens in exchange for an honest review.
I'm very conflicted after reading this. I think it had the potential to be great, but it kind of fell flat. The idea behind a society full of only women was interesting, however, it was not explored beyond "now that men are gone, there is nothing bad to poison the world" and that was that. It sits weird with me since I'm pretty sure women can be just as mean and cruel and irradiating one gender won't suddenly stop terrorism or other bad things from happening. I'm pretty sure the catfights at my school that got so bad the principal just gave every girl in certain grades detention until she could figure what actually happened and who was and wasn't involved. And it also seemed weird that in this "perfect" society things like beauty standards still existed. From the way the novel was leaning, I feel like the MC should have been conditioned against anything that men previously found attractive and all that sort of stuff but none of it was there which was disappointing. I think Artemis even fat-shamed someone at some point (in her mind at least).
With that out of the way, the plot was okay. It was interesting, but it fell flat by the end. It was building up to be a big heist and mystery, and then it wasn't. Not to mention that there were these documents in between every chapter that really interrupted the flow of the story, And I mean in between every chapter. Not just when it was relevant to the plot. There was one there every single time. It really messed with the flow of the story and brought my attention to a lot of the issues that were not addressed in the book and how misplaced some of the morals seemed to be. The book would have been a lot stronger without them as for the most part they contained information that was not relevant or that could have been explained in the story. By the time some of the documents started to be important like, by the end, I had pretty much given up reading them as they pulled me out of the novel. And even then, it felt like they got summarized enough that I didn't really need to read them anyways and it just made me wonder why they were there in the first place.
The writing in this book was not bad. I found the prose quite enjoyable. I do wish the author had incorporated the aforementioned document information into the text as he clearly has the talent to do so but chose not too. The pacing was pretty good for the most part. The characterization could use some work as Athena felt quite a lot younger than she was and not all of her interactions seemed believable. If found many of the supporting characters to be stronger in their characterization than Athena and much more interesting, which aided in creating the emotional weight for some scenes that seemed to be lacking from Athena as I genuinely liked them. I would have like to have seen and felt Athena's reactions though.
In the end, I have no idea what morals I should be taking away from this book. It could have been a fun read, however it got very preachy at some points and made me feel like there was a message I should be getting and was not, and the messages I were getting were leaving me thinking "this can't really be it." I recommend reading this as without the in-between chapter document as those were a big culprit and trying to enjoy the plot of the mystery that it is.
Or maybe I just don't understand one gender societal books, as this was my first.
If you're looking for something similar, but better executed, I'd recommend [b:The Power|29751398|The Power|Naomi Alderman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1462814013l/29751398._SY75_.jpg|50108451] by [a:Naomi Alderman|118226|Naomi Alderman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1272068831p2/118226.jpg].
I received an ARC via BookSirens in exchange for an honest review.
I'm very conflicted after reading this. I think it had the potential to be great, but it kind of fell flat. The idea behind a society full of only women was interesting, however, it was not explored beyond "now that men are gone, there is nothing bad to poison the world" and that was that. It sits weird with me since I'm pretty sure women can be just as mean and cruel and irradiating one gender won't suddenly stop terrorism or other bad things from happening. I'm pretty sure the catfights at my school that got so bad the principal just gave every girl in certain grades detention until she could figure what actually happened and who was and wasn't involved. And it also seemed weird that in this "perfect" society things like beauty standards still existed. From the way the novel was leaning, I feel like the MC should have been conditioned against anything that men previously found attractive and all that sort of stuff but none of it was there which was disappointing. I think Artemis even fat-shamed someone at some point (in her mind at least).
With that out of the way, the plot was okay. It was interesting, but it fell flat by the end. It was building up to be a big heist and mystery, and then it wasn't. Not to mention that there were these documents in between every chapter that really interrupted the flow of the story, And I mean in between every chapter. Not just when it was relevant to the plot. There was one there every single time. It really messed with the flow of the story and brought my attention to a lot of the issues that were not addressed in the book and how misplaced some of the morals seemed to be. The book would have been a lot stronger without them as for the most part they contained information that was not relevant or that could have been explained in the story. By the time some of the documents started to be important like, by the end, I had pretty much given up reading them as they pulled me out of the novel. And even then, it felt like they got summarized enough that I didn't really need to read them anyways and it just made me wonder why they were there in the first place.
The writing in this book was not bad. I found the prose quite enjoyable. I do wish the author had incorporated the aforementioned document information into the text as he clearly has the talent to do so but chose not too. The pacing was pretty good for the most part. The characterization could use some work as Athena felt quite a lot younger than she was and not all of her interactions seemed believable. If found many of the supporting characters to be stronger in their characterization than Athena and much more interesting, which aided in creating the emotional weight for some scenes that seemed to be lacking from Athena as I genuinely liked them. I would have like to have seen and felt Athena's reactions though.
In the end, I have no idea what morals I should be taking away from this book. It could have been a fun read, however it got very preachy at some points and made me feel like there was a message I should be getting and was not, and the messages I were getting were leaving me thinking "this can't really be it." I recommend reading this as without the in-between chapter document as those were a big culprit and trying to enjoy the plot of the mystery that it is.
Or maybe I just don't understand one gender societal books, as this was my first.
If you're looking for something similar, but better executed, I'd recommend [b:The Power|29751398|The Power|Naomi Alderman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1462814013l/29751398._SY75_.jpg|50108451] by [a:Naomi Alderman|118226|Naomi Alderman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1272068831p2/118226.jpg].