a lot of the ideas discussed i really liked and aligned well with feminist theory, such as the idea of internal guilt due to gender expectations, which is pushed onto women throughout their lives (guilt at being “bossy”, guilt at being “intimidating”, guilt at being “too feminine”, etc.), and i liked the perspective adichie offered

however, the book gets such a low rating for three main reasons.

firstly, as said by @doublebookedclub, this text does not feel revolutionary, and the knowledge presented was overtly simple and overpraised i felt that it was a very introductory text to not feminist theory or thinking, but an introduction to binary gender equality. simple does not mean accesible, and accesible doesn’t always mean simple. accesible leftist texts are so important, but this felt quite ‘corporate feminism’ and surface-level.

secondly, the writing style was lacklustre, remaining far too anecdotal without providing enough relevant information for the anecdote to be proved valuable to the text. this links to how simple the knowledge presented was.

lastly, the book itself is quite cisheteronormative, very focused on the biology of women, coming close to reducing women to their reproductive abilities - not a very feminist angle for a famous feminist text. this contradicted the statement she made in the text about the importance of language. however the text was written in 2012-2014, which explains the lack of inclusivity, but this fact doesn’t make the book inherently better, just allows me as a reviewer and you as a reader of this review to take it into consideration when making a judgement