This is an unusual dystopian read. About half-way through it becomes a story of day to day motherhood, which is not usually my thing, but I enjoyed the voice of the protagonist and was invested and wanted to know how things played out.

If covid is a trigger for you, this book should be a hard pass. It was published in 2015 but some of it is uncanny (a never-ending pandemic with different new strains, surprise when children show up at school without masks, etc.) ( )

Thought it would be better ( )

This is really the first dystopian novel that I have ever read. I had a hard time at the beginning with the language, as I am not familiar with this genre.
Inez creates Ani, who ends up being her "daughter" after a deal to sell her to an individual doesn't work out. Inez raises Ani and celebrates every day that she is alive.
This really felt more to me about a story about the love of parents, regardless of how or when a child is born. ( )

Heard audiobook...the pacing and intonation of the reader, Jennifer Hubbard, greatly added to the pleasurre of this book.
The story traced the development of an orphaned young adult from selling her body (valued for it's disease-resistant "hardy" genes) to seeing her own life as having some value. At some point we hear that she never had any friends, was basically shut up in a cellar for years, and only figures out about the world around her from others in her same social strata.
The basic story combines future shade-tree science in a world falling apart (due to unrelenting population decimation from epidemics) with current prejudiced and classist social structure. And while the story had merit, I was more struck by how all the hardships Inez goes through, and the inner strength and determination she facees them with, and her constant fascination with learning something whenever she has a chance. ( )

I agree with someone who says this starts out a 5 star book but then something gets lost, largely in the plausibility of the dystopia. ( )