Jennie’s Review
I do enjoy a trilogy, especially when all three books are published close together. I like knowing I’ll get some closure and that the story is leading somewhere. I’ve read this author’s mystery series and was curious when she decided to take a leap into dystopian fiction—and leap she did!
This is a splendid story set in a not-too-distant future that is surprisingly easy to imagine, given so much of what is happening in our world today. The main character, while young (especially compared to me!), was easy to identify with and understand. Choices had been taken away from her that I would have rebelled against, too, yet when an alternative is offered, there is still plenty to consider.
I really enjoyed this start to the trilogy and can’t wait to see where the next two books take the story.
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Book Summary
In the mid-21st century, the United States faces a crisis of its own making.
Burdened by the rising cost of caring for an aging population of special-needs adults born to older parents, the government enacts sweeping population-control measures: every citizen must marry by age twenty-five and produce two children by age thirty. Those who fail to comply are subject to sterilization.
Twenty-three-year-old Catherine “Cat” Ubalve is entering her final years of medical school. But with the government’s deadline rapidly approaching, Cat is forced to choose between the career she has worked toward for years and the family the government demands she create.
Everything changes after a chance encounter introduces her to a hidden community living beyond government oversight. There, people make their own choices and reject the rigid rules that govern the rest of society. Drawn to their freedom, Cat begins to question everything she has been taught, but joining them would mean abandoning medical school, leaving behind her family, and becoming a fugitive.
Soon, Cat must decide whether to submit to a future chosen for her, or risk everything for freedom. The wrong decision could cost her not only her dreams, but her life.
