Review: Only Ever Yours by Louise O' Neill

Book: Only Ever Yours

Author: Louise O' Neill

Pages: 400

Read on: Kindle

Read in: 4 hours

Plot Summary: In a world in which baby girls are no longer born naturally, women are bred in schools, trained in the arts of pleasing men until they are ready for the outside world. At graduation, the most highly rated girls become “companions”, permitted to live with their husbands and breed sons until they are no longer useful.

For the girls left behind, the future – as a concubine or a teacher – is grim.

Best friends Freida and Isabel are sure they’ll be chosen as companions – they are among the most highly rated girls in their year.

But as the intensity of final year takes hold, Isabel does the unthinkable and starts to put on weight. ..
And then, into this sealed female environment, the boys arrive, eager to choose a bride.

Freida must fight for her future – even if it means betraying the only friend, the only love, she has ever known. 

General Thoughts: This is a very weird.. no.. let's say.. a very challenging book to read and review. This book if full of girls who are so vapid and superficial, who spend all the time obsessing about their skin, hair. weight. As someone whose sense of self is not at all linked to her physical appearance, I found this just nauseating to read over and over again for 400 pages. Of course, I understand the point that the author is trying to make and the dystopian world that she has constructed, but it was still nauseatingly difficult to read or even really empathise with these poor looks-obsessed girls. Anyway, with that out of the way, let's jump to the quick bullet point-style review.

TRIGGER WARNING: This book contains triggers for eating disorders and self-harm. 

What I Liked: Quick list:

1. The dystopian world in this book is quite interesting. Global warming has killed a substantial part of the population and the survivors live indoors in temperature controlled structures and there are no trees, fruit or birds outside. There is more I have to say about the world building and related aspects but those will make it to the 'what I didn't like' list.

2. The way women are treated in this world is appalling! It is almost like taking some of the prevalent issues plaguing women everywhere today- excessive focus on physical perfection, being of a certain weight, female foeticide, intelligence seen as an unattractive trait etc.- and exaggerating it 100 fold! So, we have girls who are genetically engineered in a lab to look a certain way and are then on raised in special 'schools' where they are trained to be either companions, concubines or chastities (teachers). The girls are not allowed to have opinions, are ranked every week by the residents of their 'Zone' (this story is based in what remains of Europe) based on their appearance and are medicated to make them more appealing. Totally nightmarish!

3. There were some interesting little details in the book that underscored the lack of rights, respect and basic freedoms of women in this world. One which I thought was particularly interesting was that all the girls' names did not start with a capital letter. The girls were all isabel, megan, frieda.. while the boys were Darwin, Socrates etc. A nice touch!

4. The bullying and peer pressure-related bits in the girls' school were well depicted. megan and her posey were the stereotypical mean girls.


What I Didn't Like: Quite a few things:

1.  frieda, our protagonist, is completely spineless. She is desperate for approval, can't bear to not be a part of the 'in' crowd and is ever-so-willing to betray her best friend, isabel. I could not muster any amount of empathy or sympathy for frieda. She is weak, pathetic and I couldn't care less what became of her. I think the character-building was piss-poor in this case. There is no consistency between frieda's inner and outer world. In her lonely moments, frieda is worried about isabel putting on weight, no longer sharing her thoughts with frieda and so on, but just because megan and her clique are bullying isabel, frieda never ever expresses any concern or care towards her supposed best friend. Similarly, frieda is supposedly someone who is curious about the world before- she watches documentaries on the 'Nature Channel' and displays some kind of genuine attempt to understand Darwin and accept him as he is, but then totally flaked out and let him down. So, yeah, major roller coaster ride with her character!

2. isabel seemed like an interesting character- she had a strong will and tried in her own way to rebel against her lot in life. I would have preferred to read more about isabel than the highly annoying frieda! Too bad we didn't get to see much of isabel at all.

3. The ending of this book is just so soul-crushing. The whole book was nauseatingly depressing and I get it, in life there are often no happy endings.. but honestly, the ending of this book made me even sadder and madder!

Rating: 2.5/5 
Read this book if you want to immerse yourself in a very different type of dystopian world, but we warned that some of the themes and situations dealt with in this book can annoy, anger and disturb you.