The Power

This books is very powerful – even more so for getting me to actually think about what power means for the first time (hot take: power is the ability to influence other people). I consider myself someone who has thought a great deal about how the way society constructs gender, and how that construction affects the way people interact with each other, but this book gave me new and deeper levels of understanding how it works.

BUT if you had asked me what I thought while I was reading this book, I would have said the book was meh (and I did say this a couple of times to my boyfriend!). That is to say, STICK WITH IT, even if you're not enjoying the writing/ the characters/ the plot very much – some of it feels very derivative of other dystopian worlds. But, while you're focusing on the details (or I should say, while I was doing that), there's a bigger picture emerging and taking you along for the ride. I've found myself recommending this book to many people in conversation because of that.