Book 1 in The Lone City Trilogy
AUTHOR: Amy Ewing
PUBLISHED: September 2nd, 2014
CATEGORY: YA
GENRE: Fantasy
PREMISE: A girl who is raised to be a surrogate gets bought. Has forbidden romance in difficult times.
MY REVIEW: I'll sum this book up like so: it's trying to be A Handmaiden's Tale, but it's more like The Selection combined with The Chemical Garden Trilogy. Which means, I didn't like it very much.
It's readable. I'll give it that. I just wish we would get away from these fantasy/dystopians that have this great set up and then do everything they can to focus on a boring stock romance instead of the great idea going on. It doesn't help that this came off as pretty anti-feminist. Or at least what conservatives think feminists are. Because this society was basically women in charge, yet the women in charge were all horrible and the ones forcing these girls to get pregnant for them. At one point one of the woman makes fun of her husband and says "that's why you don't leave men in charge." Literally these women are stereotypes of what people think feminists are like. Maybe she didn't mean it to be anti-feminist, but that's what it came off as.
On top of that, everything in this is just...uninspired. Again, it's readable, the author has decent writing skills. The story has just been done before. Not just in the two series I mentioned either. It also does all the usual YA tropes: love triangle, insta-love with no basis (that leads to mentioned boring stock romance), stock characters, and again, a BORING plot that doesn't get interesting untill the last few chapters and even then, it wasn't enough to make me want to get the next book. Honestly...this was just a lazy book that could have been better had the author put a wee bit more original thought into it. But again, I did see potential in her writing skills. Perhaps she'll be like DeStafano: have a slightly mediocre first series then have a much more interesting second series because her writing has become more polished.
WHO SHOULD READ: The Selection fans, Chemical Garden Trilogy fans
MY RATING: Two and a half out of Five disappointed sighs
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