Thanks to Simon & Schuster UK Children’s and NetGalley for the Advance Review Copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was quite an interesting read. If my review seems brief it’s because this is the kind of book that’s easy to spoil so I’m only going to summarise the plot in the most general of senses.

Philomena is a seventeen year old girl who attends an elite girls school. The aim of the school is to turn girls into ‘perfect’ women for the benefit of their future husbands. I’ve heard this book compared to The Handmaid’s Tale but it’s really not aside from having that dystopian slant. If anything, this book is a commentary on rape culture. The schoolgirls are held responsible for how men react to them and must make themselves objects of desire whilst not being permitted any of their own agency.

“But men don’t have to follow the same rules of engagement that we do. Perhaps if I’d acted properly, he would have done the same”

The main theme of this book seems very relevant to current discourse around the Me Too movement, Toxic Masculinity and rape culture in general. It also touches upon the complicity of other women in sustaining sexism and misogyny.

“The poem talked about men keeping us captive. But… what about the women who work with them? Where were the mothers in that poem?”

The writing can be a little heavy handed sometimes, there’s not always a whole lot of subtlety in the message but, the book’s heart is in the right place.

I thought the love story was superfluous and there were some slightly bizarre things like a super modern, futuristic school using faxes. FAXES. I also saw the twist coming from a zillion miles away but it didn’t affect my enjoyment of the novel.

Apparently this book is going to be the first in a series but I personally thought it would have worked perfectly well as a standalone. There is lots of food for thought here for young men and women alike. The setting was something a little different and the core messages of the book, if delivered somewhat clumsily at certain points, are important themes to explore.

This was a great YA futuristic read. Set in a world very similar to our own where things are not quite as they seem. With strong feminist themes this explores some serious topics and is another brilliant feminist dystopian read.

My review

Thank you to Netgalley and Simon and Schuster UK Children’s for the E-ARC. All opinions are my own.

When I started this book, I didn’t exactly know what this was about. I had read the synopsis but only remembered that it was set in a boarding school. I don’t think the synopsis gave that much away.I’m glad that I didn’t know much else and had fun guessing what was going to happen. All I’m going to tell you the basic plot it;s about the girls in a boarding school finding out some secrets about it.

I really enjoyed the writing style and the way the story was told.It was told in first person and we found out things at the same time as the main character,Mena did. There was no unnecessary information given to confuse the reader. I liked this because it added to the mysteriousness of the book. This book made me very angry at most times, not because it was a bad book but because of how the girls were treated. I didn’t like how they were manipulated and controlled. It was a slow paced book but I really liked getting told the information bit by bit and theorising what could happen next. I had a lot of theories and some of them were correct. I guessed the big plot twist quite early on I’d say, but I was very invested in how we got there.

I liked Mena and I was really angry for her and the girls at the start of the book. I wanted to protect them at all costs.I really liked the friendships in this book. I liked that the girls told each other their problems and looked out for each other, There was no rivalries like there normally are and I found that to be a nice change. The girls tried to help each other. There was hardly any romance in this book and no insta-love. There was attraction, but not the cringey kind. I appreciated the slow pace romance between Mena and Jackson. It wasn’t the main focus of the story and I liked that. I liked that Jackson was looking out for her and her well being. I would like to see more of him and Quentin in the next book.

I really liked this book but at some points it was a bit predictable. It wasn’t a WOW book but I really enjoyed it.

I recommend this book to anyone who likes a boarding school setting, a mystery, and little to no romance.

4/5

Even if you manage to miss all the spoilery comparison references in some reviews, there are still many not-so-subtle hints scattered throughout the story so many of the plot twists are predictable. While the characters weren't particularly interesting, the story does have enough suspense and thrills to keep you engaged and wanting to find out how it ends.

Enjoyable and a fun read!

The story caught my eye from the moment I read the blurb, and I just knew I wanted to read this book. I was not let down and can recommend this to everyone!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

"The Girls of Innovations Academy are beautiful and well-behaved—it says so on their report cards. Under the watchful gaze of their Guardians, the all-girl boarding school offers an array of studies and activities, from “Growing a Beautiful and Prosperous Garden” to “Art Appreciation” and “Interior Design.” The girls learn to be the best society has to offer. Absent is the difficult math coursework, or the unnecessary sciences or current events. They are obedient young ladies, free from arrogance or defiance. Until Mena starts to realize that their carefully controlled existence may not be quite as it appears.

As Mena and her friends begin to uncover the dark secrets of what’s actually happening there—and who they really are—the girls of Innovations will find out what they are truly capable of. Because some of the prettiest flowers have the sharpest thorns."

Sci-fi is not a genre that I am overly familiar with but I will definitely be picking up more and I am now keen to read more of Young's work. The key to this book really is going into it as blind as possible. I have read a lot of reviews where the synopsis has ruined the whole story for them. I'm glad I requested knowing very little.

For the first half of the book, I wasn't sure it was for me. It did take a little while before I felt completely invested in the story. However, by the second half I had changed my mind. I found myself feeling both sick by what I was reading and enthralled to find out more. The slow burn really allows you to fall for the characters and form an attachment. Mena and her friends have such a powerful bond and I love how much attention the author gave these relationships.

My main criticism is how often the subject of weight and appearance and how this made the girls 'perfect' was mentioned earlier on in the book. I feel like with the target audience being YA, it is a very touchy subject and one that should have been approached with more sensitivity and care.

Overall I feel like this is such a strong novel and I can't wait for the next book in the series.

"Wake up, Philomena. Wake up now."

* * 
2 / 5

It's official: I am simply not a fan of Suzanne Young. I tried The Program a few years ago and now I've tried Girls With Sharp Sticks, and the problem is that Young comes up with some fantastic sounding premises and then fails to deliver on them in a way that I find enjoyable. 

"You can be girls to be afraid of"

The premise of the book - a pseudo-Handmaid's Tale world where the previously suppressed and well-behaved women rise up and fight for their freedom - intrigued me. What I absolutely will praise this book for is its ability to make the reader feel supremely uncomfortable. And I mean that as a genuine compliment. Young has crafted a world in which the young women of Innovations Academy are treated terribly and she conveys how horrible and wrong it is to the reader. 

Philomena, or Mena, is a first year student at Innovations Academy, where she is taught how to be a lady. It's very Victorian finishing school with flower growing and etiquette classes and male guardians that slap them around and force feed them drugs. Fun. Mena is a sweet girl that cares for her friends deeply and is supportive of the girls she doesn't even like very much, which makes for a refreshing heroine. She is a little bit dense though!

"I daydream too often, drift away in my thoughts. I just can't seem to stay out of my head"

My biggest problem with Girls With Sharp Sticks is that it felt flat. There's a lot that isn't clear and doesn't seem to make coherent sense. Why is a man that wants to help Mena so heavily invested in funding the Academy? Why is it communicated to the reader through the speech of the characters that women, in this world, have had their rights stripped away, yet when the girls venture out into the town or meet up with boys, this doesn't seem to come across at all? The start is also rather slow and the twist was weird - it was cool, but it didn't seem to make a lot of sense with respect to how the girl's 'parents' treated them. 

Girls With Sharp Sticks was too unsettling and not nuanced enough to be an enjoyable read. It felt a little heavy handed and overwrought to be an adult novel, yet too serious and disturbing to sit comfortable in the YA genre. 

My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of Girls With Sharp Sticks.

I think this falls into ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ territory. I read Young’s ‘The Program’ series and became increasingly annoyed with her style and sentence structure there. She tells a compelling story but I think her style is just not for me. This reminded me of Louise O’Neil’s Only Ever Yours – which I hated btw – and it’s clearly in the vein of Attwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. The trouble is, many of these types of books that speak out against misogyny have come along after that bit of the battle has already been fought, so they lack impact for me. I know there are whole new generations to raise awareness in but my problem is that so many of these YA Handmaid imitators is that they are unnuanced and very black and white. Anyway, this wasn’t for me. I don’t think it’s a bad book. It was just a combination of not liking the style and just really wanting to see sexism and misogyny addressed in better, more positive ways.

‘They’re beautiful, but it’s not all they are’.

Welcome to the world of Innovations Academy. A world of beauty, serenity, and obedience. A world of professors and guardians, redirection and guidance, and if that fails, a course of impulse control therapy will soon get you back to one hundred percent...

Now, I will start by saying I didn’t have high hopes for this one. I’ve never read anything by Suzanne Young before, but I do read a lot of YA dystopian fiction, and it’s getting rare for me to really feel like something stands out as truly special. Add to that the reference on the back to The Handmaids Tale, and I was ready for another disappointing knock off.

I. Was. Wrong.

I loved it. The idea felt really unique, and it was so well executed in the quality of the writing. I found reading this incredibly unsettling, not just because of the content, but the tone too - the way that, through Mena, you experience the slow burn of an awakening as the horror of the situation becomes more and more real.

I also liked the fact that it didn’t fall into the insta love trap. Mena’s actions aren’t driven by her desire to get with the cute boy, and I was so glad to see this - insta love in feminist leaning novels always reads as a play for fans, and it was nice to see Young sticking to her message.

My only real criticism?


SPOILERS AHEAD!







The summary of the novel that I saw before reading was different to that on GoodReads, and included a quote stating that the Girls With Sharp Sticks is like a combination of handmaids tale and a TV show that will remain nameless just to avoid spoiling as much as possible.

Now, I’m not saying the twist can’t be guessed at. But, there are certain scenes that, for me, would have been a lot more disturbing if the back cover hadn’t of literally shouted what the twist was. In big letters. Right before the synopsis. So you couldn’t miss reading it.

This didn’t overly affect my enjoyment of the book, as I still found it very well written, the tone was fantastically sinister, and I loved Mena - but I can’t help thinking that maybe not knowing that element of the novel in advance could have made it even better.

Nonetheless, I will definitely be picking up the second book in this series, and I found it a really enjoyable read that was surprisingly unsettling - always the sign of high quality writing!

I received an advanced reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review

Woozers. YA feminist dystopia and I am here for it. One of the better of the lady-dystopia books; the characters and the narrative feel real and authentic. And the sad part is that I don’t not believe this is happening somewhere already. Sharpen your sticks!