I had to come back to this 3 months after reading to just record the problematic writing so I can go recycle this book. I'll mostly let the books quotes speak for themselves. This is LONG. I'm not sorry.

Descriptions of the main male character (You could instantly tell that this was written by an older white man who desperately wanted to be resurrected as this character):
'Then one day Sam turned up at the settlement, a dashing figure of a man, tall and slim, with curly black hair, dressed very smartly in velvety sort of clothes with shiny buckles.'...'He was attractive but mysterious, strong but not threatening, and he seemed intelligent.'

As well as all of these admirable traits, he is also great at being a psychopath, doing f* all around the house (women's work right?!) and mansplaining how to eat ribs (incorrectly):
When asked about shooting people: 'It’s not bad…not if you do it properly. If you can shoot someone right through the head in the right place they don’t know it’s happened’... ‘If Sam wanted you dead, you wouldn’t even know about it’... ‘One shot is usually all I need’

The women (sorry...girls) are all mentioned as doing things round the house: Carrie – chopped wood, did all washing. Ayla – cleaned the fire pit every night and set it up every morning, fetched water, caught fish, washed pots. Tilly – made and repaired all the clothes, kept the house tidy, prepared and cooked breakfast and dinner. Sam just occasionally disappears off at night to apparently hunt...but Tilly also helps with this. What does he do all day??

'You're really supposed to cut the meat off them with the knife and fork, and then pick up the bones in a refined manner afterwards using the napkin, to nibble any remaining meat from them. You're not supposed to rip them all to bits with both hands.' (How dare he)

He does know how to behave in public though, so at least there's that...
When Tilly asks where he's going: 'To the Gentleman's room,' replied Sam in his best English butler's voice. This is a civilised establishment, one does not just piss in the corner.'

The girls (never 'women')
Carrie is apparently stupid...to the point where 'Tilly sometimes wondered whether Carrie had been dropped on her head when she a child’.

She's almost spat on by Sam for her idea of a 'nice world' being: 'a little farmhouse in the country, with two children, and the smell of cupcakes coming from the kitchen. She’d be singing sweetly and the little birds would be fluttering about and twittering as she hung out the washing in the sunshine, and all the animals would be her friends.’ Not a Disney fan then?

The well-known concept of comparing snowflakes being different to people being different is brought up a couple of times as if the author thought of this himself and as if it's the most profound thing ever to be said. Carrie has apparently managed to come up with this herself though, obviously a massive surprise: 'Billions of snowflakes. One for every soul in the world, and no two the same!' Tilly looked back, surprised to hear philosophical words coming from Carrie. What Carrie had said was very deep and meaningful (was it though?!). Perhaps there was hope for her yet

However, she is also described, by Sam, as 'older and wiser' than Tilly. And also 'one of those people who likes things to be organised'. Sam, however this this makes her 'a pest'.  I'm taking this personally He still finds it in himself to sleep with this stupid pest though *eye roll*

Tilly is the 'smart one' and don't we hear about it...
'Tilly liked science best. That was unusual. A girl that liked science.' ...sigh
'Tilly was very clever, she was a science girl and she had a good grasp of it, even the theoretical bits' ...wow! Even the 'theoretical bits'?? Sounds like she might know those 'bits' better than the author...
She even likes her 'little white ceramic' cups just because they remind her of 'laboratory beakers' (which are surely made of glass??)
Anyway, obviously Tilly is also only a lowly girl so has to have her flaws too: 'Tilly on the other hand threw like a typical girl. She missed more often than she hit, and she squeaked every time.'

Problematic relationships:
This set-up would be absolutely fine if either of the girls seemed vaguely happy with it...this is very much back to 'Sam's' dream world:
As soon as Carrie and Sam turned up at Tilly's house, they lasted a week before arguing over who 'got Sam': 'Tilly hadn’t seen why Carrie had to have Sam all the time, when she didn’t have a boy at all’. 'After a while [Sam] told them both to stop arguing about it, because he didn’t belong to either of them, and he’d go to bed with whichever one of them he wanted’. 'It turned out he wanted both of them, but not at the same time. They weren’t sure what criteria he had for deciding who was his favourite at any given moment. Perhaps there wasn’t any, and it was more like choosing what to have for dinner – more of a question of ‘what do you fancy?’.  I have nothing to add here.

Despite this, we're constantly reminded that Sam does have a clear preference:
'Sam did his best to share his attentions out evenly between Carrie and Tilly, although at some deeper level he preferred Tilly’. 'There was no need to hide the fact that he liked them both, but he liked Tilly better'. Well why wouldn't he when, compared to Carrie, she 'smiled a bit more often, and was blonde'.

This all continued throughout the book and we apparently needed to be constantly updated on who Sam was going to be sleeping with every night and the hatred that caused between the girls. There seems to be absolutely no concept of Tilly actually respecting Sam and Carrie's pre-existing relationship, or Sam not wanting to sleep with all women (sorry, 'girls') in his path, or even the thought that maybe Tilly isn't interested in Sam or...shock, horror...may not be interested in men, or anyone at all! Oh no, sorry we;re in a straight white man's head. It could have actually gone down a worse track, and almost did, with: 'Tilly playfully, turning to Carrie and giving her a slap across the bottom'...but luckily it stopped there before descending into some fantasy porn world.

Heading into more problematic territory, the third girl (an actual child, so girl does apply here for once) is also sexualised and this was the point where I almost had to put the book down. Ayla is described as dirty and cave-girl like...and also as 'eleven or twelve' (she was 8/9 when she joined them)... but none of these things stop Sam wondering whether she's any good to sleep with: 'At the moment [Ayla] was no threat to the menage a trois, and Sam wasn’t interested in her anyway. She was a bit too young, not particularly girl-shaped yet (can someone tell me what 'girl-shaped' is meant to be please), and preferred to sleep on her own.' At least she got a choice about sleeping on her own, unlike the other two, thank god!

On a lighter note, 'Sam' obviously has a blonde fetish and this is brought up NUMEROUS times throughout the book, with women being reduced to just a hair colour:
When describing his dream scenario, Sam wants to be ‘eating nice foods and shagging a blonde any time I like’.

When Tilly is concerned that Sam 'hasn’t come back and snuggled in my bed for nearly a week', Carrie helpfully offers: 'well maybe he’s gone off blondes,’. Don't worry though, 'Later that night, Tilly discovered Sam had definitely not gone off blondes.'

I feel like that's enough for 'the girls' so we'll get on to some general life wisdom.

Did you know that:
No teachers are allowed to think for themselves? 'The teacher didn’t know, and didn’t seem bothered that she didn’t know. She just did what most girls do when they don’t know the answer to something, she giggled.' 'The teacher was probably only teaching what she what she ha been told to teach, she probably wasn’t allowed to think about, or tell people, things that weren’t written in the book'

All scientists are selfish glory hunters: 'Scientists worked like that. They only wanted answers to the big questions, because they were only interested in doing something of great significance that would win them a prize. If it wasn’t something they could get credit for they weren’t interested.'

Most boys are lazy: 'Lots of the boys either liked nothing and just wanted to mess about, or they were willing to put up with certain subjects because they were easy and didn’t need much effort. That was boys for you.'

And this last little pearl that has probably never occurred to you because you're not as smart as this 'man' in his twenties who has never had a job, regularly talks about how he's not happy, but can occasionally catch a rabbit and is sleeping with two women: ‘life was much better if you just chose something as a career that you liked’

In order to not be entirely down on this book: the plot had some interesting ideas and I did actually finish it...I'm ignoring the epilogue for this portion of semi-positivity. I'd suggest just having a couple of conversations with actual women, instead of getting ideas from what I'll euphemistically call 'the internet', and perhaps get an editor to check over that grammar :)