I was very hesitant going into this book because I love The Handmaid's Tale (it's 4 stars for me) and I especially loved how it ended. That book was powerful to me because of the limited scope of Offred's narration, and I think that's the main reason this book is only three stars. We get three different perspectives: a young girl growing up in a privileged family, a woman privy to the inner workings of Gilead, and a Canadian girl with an outsider's eyes. It's a pretty wide scope and we get so many answers to the questions brought up in the first book. Only, I never really wanted answers.

I think if you're someone who read The Handmaid's Tale and wanted to explore Gilead more or were irritated by the lack of closure at the end, you'll love this. Atwood does a good job of giving satisfactory and well developed answers. I just think for me it didn't matter what the answers were because I never wanted them.

I also found myself particularly irritated by Daisy's point of view, the young Canadian girl. She's 15, but read more like 12 to me. She was so painfully immature and ignorant, and almost more like a teenage caricature than a real person. I don't know how often Atwood has written from the perspective of teenagers, but I read YA a fair amount and really expect them to be just as well fleshed out as the adult characters. Daisy felt like what an adult expects a teenager to be, rather than an actual teenager.

I really loved the other two characters, though. Aunt Lydia was so well developed and her backstory was wonderful. She's rather flat in The Handmaid's Tale because we only see Offred's perspective of her, and this book enhanced her character beautifully. I'm not sure how much I particularly cared about knowing about her, but Atwood made her fascinating and I was hooked. I loved every manipulation and every facet of her personality, positive or negative.

This book brought up some interesting thoughts for me in regards to literary fiction. There's no good way to define it, no hard lines, but in general, we seem to have no issue categorizing The Handmaid's Tale as lit fic. This book, on the other hand, felt a lot more commercial (genre?) to me. The focus wasn't an individual's story, but rather fighting the system and the (melo)drama of their lives. It wasn't like the first one at all in that regard, and I think it was weaker for it. I love genre fiction and it's most of what I read, but this felt like it was trying to be something it wasn't.

I also found this book rather predictable. Especially towards the end I knew where it was going and for the last 60-80 pages was really dreading it. I kept expecting Atwood to pull out something new or interesting, but it was all just rather generic. Like she was giving us something easily palatable and expected. It wasn't terrible, but I think that was what knocked this book down from 4 to 3 stars for me. This wasn't a story I wanted wrapped up with a bow. The first book was too messy for that, and powerful because of it.

Overall, I just don't think this was for me. It was well done. Atwood is a wonderful writer and I've yet to read anything of hers I didn't find worthwhile, but I didn't think The Handmaid's Tale was a book that needed a sequel. Mostly this book gave me a lot of answers to questions I was happy to ponder on my own. It felt like it almost cheapened the ending of the first book. I still recommend it, though, and the people who want closure are probably going to love it as much as the first one.