I loved Blue Ticket. Set in a dystopian world in which 14-year-old girls are given either a blue ticket (denoting a fun-loving childless future) or white ticket (a designation as a child-bearer), it's a novel about choice, desire, pregnancy and the policing of women's bodies – The Handmaid's Tale meets The Road. It's vivid and utterly gripping.

I very much enjoyed Blue Ticket, which was the first Sophie Mackintosh novel that I’ve read. Although in many ways it’s quite a ‘quiet’ book, the prose is beautiful and I read it very quickly, as it seemed pacy despite the quietness. Would recommend.

I was really excited for this as I loved Sophie Mackintosh's The Water Cure, and the concept sounded really interesting.

Blue Ticket tells the story of Calla in a dystopian future where girls, when they reach adolescence, must collect a "ticket" which determines if they are allowed to have children or not. Calla has a blue ticket, so she is fitted with a medical instrument which means she cannot conceive.

I love this concept, but it didn't love this book as much as I wanted to. It's obvious comparison is The Handmaid's Tale - one of my favourite books - but while it's nothing like The Handmaid's Tale in terms of plot, it also lacks a lot of the world building, which I think was sorely missed.

I think I could have done with another 100 pages or so at the beginning to introduce the world a bit more, but this ambiguity is a big part of The Water Cure so I shouldn't be surprised really that we begin very much in media res.

The writing is as brilliant as expected from Sophie Macintosh, but I didn't find myself connecting to any of the characters and the plot just didn't engage me.

This story is set in a dystopian future where motherhood or freedom is a lottery depending on the colour of a ticket all women are given after leaving girlhood behind. The main character has a blue ticket to provide freedoms, but she is not allowed to be a mother. She desires motherhood and the story is about her seeking freedom away to have her baby and her state of mind throughout the ordeal, contrasting another woman opposite to her. The book was confusing to start with as it delves right into the action without any setting, so I was confused until I read more of the book. Context at the start would have been better.

Sophie Mackintosh’s second novel, Blue Ticket, is billed as a feminist dystopia where adolescent girls are assigned either a blue or white ticket once they get their first period. ‘White tickets’ are required to seek out a solid heterosexual relationship and give birth to children, whereas ‘blue tickets’ are released on a path of uncertain freedoms, assigned to jobs that are deemed to suit them but able to control their personal lives – as long as they never get pregnant. Predictably enough, our protagonist, Calla, is a ‘blue ticket’ who has never especially questioned the system until she begins to realise how much she wants to be a mother. When she becomes pregnant, she flees the city for the wilderness outside, and travels in hope of reaching the ‘border’ to embark on a new life in a different country that doesn’t have the same rules. The first half or so of Blue Ticket, therefore, despite Mackintosh’s sharp writing, feels like YA with weak worldbuilding crossed with yet another literary novel about dysfunctional women, as Calla careers blindly through her life and we learn very little about how this system works or why it exists.

To my surprise, however, once Calla is firmly established as a fugitive, Blue Ticket becomes a rather different and more interesting book. What began to emerge for me is that Mackintosh is just not interested in writing an actual dystopia or even realist fiction. The female life-cycle that she depicts is, instead, far more stylised and symbolic: at puberty, Calla and the other ‘blue ticket’ girls were required to set off alone on the road to make their way to their new lives, and it is this common experience that comes to define them. As another woman says to Calla, ‘You need to let yourself remember how you did it before… The system has failed us. But our bodies got us here the first time.’ Calla’s flight, therefore, feels less like the typical rebellion of a dystopian heroine but a preordained step in a folktale, especially with the sense that the authorities know what she’s doing all the time. Once the story settles like this, it has moments when it becomes mesmerising. I was especially struck by how Mackintosh makes motherhood weird and fresh again once we see it through the eyes of the ‘blue ticket’ women, who don’t have the inherited knowledge that we take for granted: ‘She turned back and I realised that the baby was attached to her nipple, its mouth locked on to her flesh. I thought about the heaviness of my breasts, hard and blue when I undressed, and it made a terrible new sense.’

Because of its long uncertainty about the kind of book it wants to be, Blue Ticket doesn’t live up to its potential: I wished there had been more about how the ticket system shaped these women’s emotional lives, and that Mackintosh had begun the story with Calla’s decision, allowing us to spend more time with the community she builds outside the city walls. Nevertheless, I was impressed by Mackintosh’s prose, especially on childbirth – in labour, Calla goes ‘up the ladder of the pain, rung by rung’ and, having heard tales of PND, fears that, afterwards, ‘my brain was loosening in my skull’ – and I’d read more by her. 3.5 stars.

(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)

It is always disappointing to give a low score when reviewing books. Especially when the hype around this book had been quite positive. I was very excited to read it.

And then I wasn't...

For me, this book never really got past "boring." From the outset, Calla reminded me of an angsty teenager from a YA novel. Very hard to read, very hard to feel any sympathy or empathy for...and quite simply, she was the most unlikeable character I have read for a while.

And the reasons for the tickets? The backstory? Who made these rules? All of that was somewhat lacking and we never really find out the answers to these questions - at least, not that I could locate.

And then, when you think the story starts to get interesting and Calla is pregnant on the run from the emissaries, she takes shelter in a cabin...and then NOTHING happens for page after page...just more incessant, pointless rambling. The whole plot comes to a screeching halt for no particular reason. I understand "ebb and flow" in a novel - this was not that.

I really wanted it to end well - and, to be honest, that's all I could have hoped for by then - and it did in some ways and is the reason it didn't end with a one-star review. Certainly not well enough to change my mind about how dull and boring it was as a whole story.

I understand the feminist angles - and appreciate them. I understand the "my body, my choice" story and appreciate that, too. But as an actual readable story - this failed for me.


Paul
ARH

I liked Sophie Mackintosh’s The Water Cure, but The Blue Ticket was a bit disappointing. The concept is really interesting: a lottery determines which women are allowed to have babies and which aren’t. Like a lot of dystopian books, it explores reproductive rights and women’s right to choose - but also not much happens... It progressed really slowly and I felt like we were missing so much information (why is this happening to women/where is the story happening?/who’s making the decisions, etc). It’s a bit disturbing, but the writing was beautiful & hypnotizing!

I enjoyed this book from the author of The Water Cure. It has the same creepy and suspenseful vibe that I loved and is also a female-driven story. We follow Calla, who has been assigned a blue ticket at the time of her first period, meaning she has not been designated for motherhood (a white ticket) but becomes pregnant anyway.
The writing style is brilliant, and I especially found the description of getting one's first period to be visceral and relatable. The story is superficially similar to Matched by Ally Condie, but the content and vibe are very different. Calla’s journey through pregnancy and motherhood is essentially a quest to be loved. I’ll let you figure out if she finds it or not by yourself.

I had not read Sophie Mackintosh's previous novel, The Water Cure, so was unfamiliar with her writing. I found the story quite trie, with echoes of The Handmaid's Tale and a lot of dystopian fiction in general. Mackintosh's writing is gorgeous and poetic but often she writes her into a circle describing situations but without any forward movement. Ultimately I felt like I never got to know any of the characters, particularly the protagonist Calla.

The loose plot of the novel is that pubescent girls are given a ticket, a white ticket means they will become mothers and a blue ticket means they can live their lives "freely". I am not sure what this means or whether it has any bearing on anything. Unfortunately it's too literal to be symbolic of women's freedoms (or lack thereof).

Thanks to NetGalley, Doubleday Books and Sophie Mackintosh for the galley in exchange for an honest review.

I read about this novel on a review site, where it came well recommended as a summer read.
A twist on the dystopian reproductive novel and it sounded intriguing.

Calla lives in a futuristic society where reproduction is controlled. As soon as girls begin menstruating, they are allocated a ticket. White tickets mean a life of reproduction; family and children. Blue means a life of freedom. A coil is fitted giving and women live a life uninhibited by reproduction.

Calla is a Blue Ticketer and quite hedonistic in her life. She has a good job, a nice flat, a sexual partner, a good level of fitness she smokes like a chimney and drinks like a fish.
Although, when Calla’s reproductive clock starts to tick and the only way, she can stop the ticking is by having a baby.
Cast out from her Blue Ticket society a pregnant Calla goes on the run. This novel is about what happens when she leaves home. There is very little about the country she lives in (I assume USA), or what happened in society to bring in the lottery, or anything else about the society.

For me things were alluded to and it I think I might have missed some of the plot as nothing is said clearly. Only from Calla’s point of view and she doesn’t seem to care about much. Without giving to much away I think I missed a big bit near the end but maybe this is the point. Calla is so focused on herself and her baby that she seems to care little about what else is going on around her.

I came to then end and thought all that for this? This is not the first time I have not enjoyed one the critics seem to love, and I am sure it won’t be the last. But for me this book did just not get me into the depths of interest where I was rooting for her.

I follow lots of publishers and book people on Twitter and this book had a lot of buzz about it, so I was excited to read it. I just don't seem to have much luck with critically acclaimed books at the moment as I kind of hated this book. Maybe you're meant to. There's no context or history given to the world the protagonist is living in which I found annoying. So you are just dropped into the story with no real background or build up and you think ok it will come through the story, but it doesn't. I found I really didn't like the main character but then maybe you're not meant to as she seems to have been brainwashed to dislike herself. The whole thing was weird and vaguely unsatisfying and I'm afraid not for me.

On a girl's first menstruation she must attend a clinic where her future is decided. Should she receive a blue ticket, she is fitted with an IUD and sent out with a basic survival kit to make her way in the adult world, with all possibilities open to her except one, motherhood. White tickets are the future mothers in the dystopian future.

The story follows Calla, as she makes her way from the home she shares with her father into her blue ticket world. 18 years after her fate was decided, Calla begins to yearn for a child and makes the bold step of removing her IUD and seeking out a partner with the sole purpose of getting pregnant. To break the societal rules in this way results in banishment from the city and a short headstart to freedom (trying to cross the border to a neighbouring country). Capture is probable. It is unclear what might happen upon capture but the reader is in no doubt that any hopes of the runaway keeping their baby would be extinguished.

Told in the first person, Calla alludes to her abusive childhood, tells of her superficial "good" life in the city and carries you through all the people she meets and situations she finds herself in throughout her banishment.

The first person account from Calla was absorbing and readable, particularly around female relationships and the need for body autonomy.

I was so immersed that it was only as I neared the ending of the story that I began to feel irritated that I still knew very little about the dystopian world the book inhabited. For me, this failure to paint a fuller picture of the dystopian society and Calla's childhood (what happened to her mother? Had she run away from her white ticket life?) left me somewhat underwhelmed.

There’s no shortage of fiction at present, dystopian or otherwise, about women and motherhood, fertility and reproduction rights. The concept is not novel, so anyone attempting to make a place for themselves in this genre should really aim to make a meaningful impact/contribution in my opinion, otherwise it’s just an echo chamber of repetitive narrative mass marketed to make sales.

That being said, I don’t usually buy in to this genre. What caught my eye with Blue Ticket was that it seemed to promise something a little different. The universe in which it takes place does not necessarily relegate women exclusively to the domestic sphere, or segregate them based on their fertility, but focuses instead on their perceived maternity: their ability to mother, is questioned, assessed, and categorized.

On the day of your first bleed you pull a blue or a white ticket. “A white ticket grants you children. A blue ticket grants you freedom. You are relieved of the terrible burden of choice. And, once you've taken your ticket, there is no going back.” Essentially the question of children is decided for you by some unknown higher power.
I say unknown higher power because I DNF’d this book at 40%, so I didn’t get to find out who this higher authority is, and how they assess a female’s ability to nurture or why they do so – if any of this is explained at all. This is essentially what irritated me and why I couldn’t finish. I didn’t like not understand the universe and why Calla was in danger. I thought after the eerie opening where Calla is allocated her ticket, and we jump to her later adulthood, what we witnessed would be contextualized. I’m sure some readers love having burning questions constantly, in fact it was probably a technique of the book – but it’s not for me.

I think Blue Ticket has potential in this genre, but I was too bored to stick around to find the answers I was looking for.

I will be the first to admit that I loved The Water Cure and it was, at the time, such a good deviation from my usual reads that it shone through. With that in mind, I was expecting something on that level and unfortunately, I let myself down on that front. Blue Ticket is not the same as The Water Cure and I kept expecting it to be so.

We read the entire book through Calla’s perspective and it’s a great perspective which helps us show exactly how the world works in this particular book. It’s horrifying and slightly something I could see happening in future in certain countries, if I am being honest. In any case, the fate of the women is decided by the Lottery once a girl starts menstruating. She’s then either classified into a Blue Ticket or a White Ticket. Blue Ticket means that she gets to be free of the responsibility of becoming a mother, she would go on and contribute to the society in other meaningful ways. White Ticket means that she would have no freedom of contributing to the society but by becoming a mother.

Calla is chosen for the Blue Ticket and she’s then sent to the city where she’s supposed to live in freedom. There’s a strict policies and people in place making sure that nobody is rebelling and doing the thing they are not supposed to do. Calla works in a lab wherein she’s also supposed to answer to a Dr. A. This is the bare bones of the setup and I wish there was more of it.

Coming to the worldbuilding, I have complaints. Everything is so vague and not detailed to the point where I am just giving up on finding anything solid and real. Calla, herself, is not quite a whole person, it seems at times. She’s also vague, she goes through the motions of trying to achieve her own wants and needs, I couldn’t get the depth I was hoping to get from her. She’s a difficult person to like or to even try to understand. Her wish to become a mother also didn’t seem real because she didn’t seem real. It mostly seems rebellious action than actually wanting a child and that made a whole lot of other problems arise.

Overall, I just wish it was more fleshed over and had a bit more detail than the ones we were given. I gave it 2.75 stars for lost potential.

On the day of her first bleed, Calla reports at the lottery station where her life will be determined.
While the white ticket grants you children, the blue one frees you from any childbearing responsibilities.
Calla gets a blue ticket and sets off on a dangerous journey to the city.
For years she enjoys her carefree lifestyle, but as time passes, she starts longing to be a mother. Will her desire to have a child win over the fear of what happens to the ones who go against the rules?

As a fan of dystopian stories, I have been gripped by the blurb and thus was excited to be approved for this ARC.
The premise of this book is really intriguing, but unfortunately, the story fell flat for me.
The writing style wasn't to my taste, and I found the story was really slow.
The book is a good attempt at contemplating motherhood and women's right to do with their bodies as they wish. I found that it was more of a character study than an action-packed dystopian story, and unfortunately, this wasn't what I expected.
Also, I'm not a fan of books where nothing is explained. The world-building was hardly existent.
The only bit that gripped me was the ending.
I'm sure this book will find its fans, so by no means rely on my opinion.
I'm definitely going to check out the author's other novel.

First things first: Mackintosh’s prose has gotten even better since her debut, which I already enjoyed a lot. There is something mesmerizing about the way she constructs her sentences and I am always in love with her metaphors and allusions. On a sentence-by-sentence level, this is excellent and cemented what I said after reading her debut: I will always be reading what she writes even if this reading experience was uneven for me.

Her depiction of female longing and female friendship worked exceedingly well for me – and I would indeed argue that this is what she is interested in because where this book falters is in its dystopian elements. Calla’s close first person narration is our entry point into the world Mackintosh has created here and as she knows very little about her society, it remains vague and what we learn makes very little sense. While this is arguably true for her debut as well, there I thought the vagueness worked because it was never quite clear if what the protagonists knew was true at all. This time around, this is very obviously a dystopian society and even if Calla does not know why things came about, the consequences are very true for her life. Again, I do not think the dystopian part is Mackintosh’s strength or even what she really set out to write about. Whenever the story focussed on what Calla experienced and on her inner life and struggles, the book shone and I wish that part had been more prevalent throughout. I knew going in that I probably should not expect the dystopia to be ground-breaking in its political machinations, so the book did overall work for me but I can see where other readers might struggle. In the end, I am such a huge fan of Mackintosh’s prose that even as parts did not work for me, overall I did appreciate the book a lot (and it made me cry).

I really enjoyed The Water Cure and Blue Ticket definitely confirmed my like of Sophie Mackintosh's writing. The style is very readable but also highly skilled and I love the short digestible chapters.

Blue Ticket is very engrossing and I understood from The Water Cure not to expect explainations for things like you might in a standard dystopian novel. This might not suit everyone, understandably. I enjoyed the book a lot and will continue to pick up her books in the future.

What I will say though, is that it isn't as good as The Water Cure. I can't necessarily tell you why, it's just a feeling.

(Review also posted on Goodreads)

Sophie Mackintosh' first novel - The Water Cure - had such high praise that I wondered if this one could live up to it. It can. She has such a good eye for social commentary without being preachy. A must read.

A nightmarish country akin to The Handmaid’s Tale, where women are assigned a ticket and thus a life; blue for ‘freedom’, or white to have a family; while men have no limits at all. I’d love to have found out more about the world, not just the few characters whose stories we see. But interesting concepts glimpsed at though these.

I liked how this explored the topic of pregnancy and discussions over motherhood and who gets to have a child and the choice over a woman's body. The writing was quick in tone and it did not seem to have any moments that dragged it down. The characters were all interesting and they were fleshed out enough that they seemed believable in this world. There were several moments that were heartbreaking and this was balanced by the moments of action and suspense.