Womb City

I have mixed feelings about this book; it's definitely a unique story. While it falls into the sci-fi/horror/dystopia genre, which isn't typically my go-to, I found it intriguing nonetheless. Despite feeling confused, half of the time, I was still invested in the story. It also delves into important topics like feminism, patriarchy, race, gender, identity, and motherhood.

The concept of this book was super interesting to me; a world where people can body hop and live hundreds of years while simultaneously, everything women do is controlled, even down to pregnancy. But unfortunately, I think most of it went right over my head. Things were a lot deeper than they originally seemed and it just confused me every time new information was given to the reader. I did enjoy the social conversations this book had throughout about wealth, race, sex vs. gender, and the overall struggles of being a woman, and I think that's what saved this book for me. I was super excited about this novel and I'm only slightly disappointed that I didn't love it.






Thank you to Kensington Books, Erewhon Books, and Recorded Books for providing me with both an eBook and an Audiobook copy to review on NetGalley.

After taking part in just about every goodreads giveaway possible, I finally got approved for the audio from NetGalley. I love the cover, and I really wanted to dig into this one.

Unfortunately, this may have arrived to me at just the wrong time or something, or perhaps not. It just didn’t grip me, didn’t work.

I sadly found the main character to be incredibly unlikable. So even with her living in and through trauma, there isn’t necessarily enough for me to grab onto to care. For me, adultery just turns me off to pretty much anything you could possibly say, so although it’s about her having control over something, any little thing, it just doesn’t matter to me. It’s wrong. Doesn’t matter if I understand the angle.

With that being said, it left the story feeling like it was really missing something, and in that sense, it read as sadly boring, and even confusing at some points. I think the confusion was meant to be, in part, showing the detachment from the main character, but it didn’t exactly work for me. Which is really sad, because the snippets of background world you get are really interesting. You’re dropped into this sort of Afro-futuristic Botswana where technology has reached all new heights—people can live longer, transfer consciousness into other bodies, and augment themselves—but sadly these heights are still being used to further invade women’s space. And in this case, sadly their literal minds and memories, and nothing is safe.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARCA in exchange for an honest review.

While I did enjoy the speculative fiction angle, which is all I thought this book would be, there were too many happening for me to enjoy keeping track of. The book starts with interesting description of a not too distant future in Botswana where people can download their conscience into other bodies, and everybody has the right to live several consecutive lives in different bodies, with a caveat - and in this same incredibly progressive society, whoever has the misfortune to have committed a crime of any kind is forevermore shunned and has to undergo an annual investigation into whether they display other criminal tendencies. Women are regularly brutalised and mistreated, and it gets worse from there. I loved the accents which brilliant I giving just the right touch of colour without impeding understanding. Overall, I'd say I'd look forward to another book by this author l'if it leaned more heavily into the speculative fiction aspect.