I was intrigued by the premise of this book: a world that is so overpopulated that childbirth requires a donor who is willing to give up his or her own life. In this world, a depressed woman named Mae finds herself pregnant with a child that she does not want, but that her partner, Pasha, desperately does. As they struggle to protect mother and child without costing anyone else’s life, journeys are taken, prejudices are confronted, and their perceptions of morality itself are challenged.

Despite the intriguing premise, I found it difficult to get invested in this book. The writing style threw me off—the book is full of sentence fragments that are clearly included on purpose as a writing style, but the device was overused. The characters didn’t feel multidimensional. Mae’s backstory was revealed slowly and should have made her character seem complex and nuanced, but instead she felt flat, as if her depression was all there was to her. Pasha also was one-dimensional: he was handsome, personable, unreasonably optimistic, and blindly devoted to Mae, who treated him with contempt as often as with love. Neither showed the complexity or growth I hoped to see, although there were hints toward the end that maybe some of that will happen in the second book of the series.

Overall, I really wanted to like this book, but it fell short of my hopes.

Disclosure: I was given a free advance reader copy of this book, with no obligation. The decision to leave an unbiased review was entirely my own.

Actually I finished this book 2 days ago, and I waited till now to write a review, because I was absorbing the details, my first reaction reading it, I need to admit, I was a bit put off by in the first chapter because I almost didn’t know the main character name, because Mae was addressed only as she, but now that I finished it, perhaps it was meant to be like that, and of course I wont spoil the story explaining what I meant, but it kind of makes sense this disconnect with reality. I also got mad quite some times with Pasha, because I was keep in the dark of what he was trying to accomplish the same way Mae was, but that was also understandable he didn’t want her to stress and how guilty could you be of something if you had no idea?

I really enjoy a dystopian world, and I dread just imagining that it could be true… this world is absolutely terrifying, women are killed in the streets because they are expecting, even if the mother has a bracelet that makes her pregnancy legal… in place of each born child, someone must die, and in this world most of the people that dies for babies are elder people, and besides being born more babies, old people are also killed because they are not allowed to have their medication, in my opinion a society that doest value life is very messed up… fathers are not allowed to give their life for their unborn child, if they are in a age that they can contribute for society, they can only voluntary themselves if they have a life threatening sickness… is a very sad situation, and I don’t know if I was in this world if I could chose where to go and what to do, but definitely asking someone to die for my child is not something I could easily do…

You have lots of twists and turns, we had one earlier in the book that I started thinking it was pointless to know, but in the end it makes more sense to have that bit of information, other thing is that I wish we learned more about Iris and her past, but besides that the book feels complete, while I know that a second volume in the story is to come, you wont feel disappointed or cheated of a ending, because you do have one, I recommend this book to all fans of dystopian stories and believe me when I say this, is worth the dive, don’t give up in the start, the story gets better.

I got a free ARC copy from the author and this is my honest opinion.

First off there are some things that you just have to accept in this world:
1. EVERY country somehow managed to agree to a plan to reduce the world's population. I honestly find it kind of hard to believe that they all actually agreed and something came of this.
2. Britain (now The Society), announces their plan, which is to require new babies born to have someone die and sacrifice their life. They make this announcement at 6:30pm and people have until midnight to register their fetus. Yes, most of those further along probably should have already done so, but there are of course going to be a bunch that haven't, or just recently learned of their pregnancy. So, of course the website will crash.
2a. They've been talking to all the other countries for WEEKS now, and you want me to believe that this didn't leak before, that no one knew this was coming?!

Now to the review. Mae and Pasha are both crappy and I never once felt like I should support them in their endeavor. Mae doesn't speak up and Pasha just talks right over her, never really listening to her concerns. Mae is already questioning if she wants this baby but Pasha is immediately all on board, not a care at all about Mae's worries. Pasha also

Spoiler

illegally gave his sperm to his brother and sister in law for them to have a baby, WIHTOUT telling Mae. Are you kidding me, who does that. And taking a bunch of money out of their savings without discussing it, was also stupid

.

Mae also has this big secret about her family and her past that she won't share with Pasha. We do learn what it is and the end, but how it was delivered I had to reread those pages 5 times just to figure out what actual secret it was. She never says it, Pasha just knows once he figures it out. Which was poorly done in my opinion.

We spend almost the entire book in Mae's head. We learn about how she had a bad childhood with neglectful parents. We hear about this no less than 100 times. This author is all about the tell don't show, but I really wish we would have been SHOWN more.

I wanted to stop reading it about 1/3 through, but pushed through, then again at 60% because so little actually happens! They're going from county to county, Mae is worried, Pasha says it's all be fine. Wash, rinse, repeat. They also hate on Nan, Pasha's grandma, who did more for the two of them then anyone else. They don't believe her about her past, and are generally dismissive the whole time.

2.5 stars rounded down.

Thanks to BookSierns for the ARC.