Poster Girl - Veronica Roth

Fiction/Dystopia

Rating: 6/10

It’s only fair to say of this rating that I seem to have lost my taste for dystopian fiction, a literary love affair begun over a decade ago with Hunger Games.  Maybe living through a real-life situation with empty grocery store shelves and deserted sidewalks makes it all a little too close for comfort.

This story follows Sonya, a young woman living her out days in a prison after the collapse of the oppressive dystopian regime into which she was born. She is given an offer, find a missing girl and earn your freedom. If you’ve read as many dystopian novels as I have you probably realize there is no such thing.

Sonya has her reasons for choosing to play along and the dark secrets she discovers about her family along the way, secrets that are only eclipsed by her own.  With the constant surveillance that society has her under can any of them be kept?

The world building of this novel was exemplary, with complex factions of society and regulations that require adherence, but the characters seemed to suffer from a malaise that flattened them out.  Not typical of this author and ultimately a disappointment that overshadowed the plot.

Book Pairing(s): Vox by Christina Dalcher, Chosen Ones by Veronica Roth, The Husbands by Chandler Baker