Powerful and fiercely evocative.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reading copy.

Feel like this was a good concept but it took too much from other books unfortunately - is essentially The Knife of Never Letting Go with the genders swapped.

I received an Advance Reader Copy from the publisher via NetGalley. This in no way impacted on my view.

DNFed at 25%. This was just a strange book. The concept was one I was intrigued by - what would happen if half of the population died and only women were left? Well, apparently it becomes a sort of utopia where wars have ended, there’s word peace, and everyone is friends? No one seems to disagree, and it’s become a quasi-communist society where everyone takes part in everything, they don’t own things themselves, and have sort of regressed technology wise. I was sort of liking it, but Raven was a main character I just couldn’t get used to. She has a strange voice, and was pitifully naive too. The writing style was one that was giving me a headache, and I just didn’t see the point in wasting any more time on the book than I already had. Extremely disappointing.

There was much to enjoy here, but I found I couldn't connect with it. I'd read more from this author in the future though.

The premise is intriguing and had me curious from the start, but unfortunately I perhaps had too high expectations of how this book would plan out. I wasn’t expecting this to be about pitting genders against each other, but more about that gender doesn’t define who we are. It was lacking in suspense and it just didn’t feel like it was going anywhere. There wasn’t much plot, and I didn’t understand the concept of because men aren’t there that there wouldn’t be war? That seemed a bit strange. This book wasn’t for me, but it wasn’t terrible.

Who Runs The World? Has a unique premise that is definitely worth exploring for the themes of gender equality and power imbalance. It definitely challenges current points of view well. It is a bit slow to start with a lot of the action happening towards the second half of the book. Not a bad read!

Interesting book, having read The Power recently I couldn't help but compare. Who rounds the world focuses on a genderless (?) society of women who with three generations in don't consider gender until a boy is found.

There is not a lot in the way of action going on until the second part of the novel. The world building of this new world without men, where men are only traded for their sperm, is very slowly done. The first part of the book explores River and her little town and the structure of their rebuilt society.

I did like the character of River eventually, when we first meet her she is often sullen, cross and very very proper with not much in the way of personality. As the story grows her personality seems to grow too as we learn about her passion for engines and what this means for her future and society's future.

The story has some really important messages for today including the environment and how we're damaging it now, to gender equality and rape. Not a book for younger readers.

This book shows us a very interesting world but not one I would like to visit!

The premise of this book had me really excited - I love a good bit of feminist literature! Sadly, I struggled to get into the book and after a couple of attempts I decided it sadly wasn't for me.

I wish the author every success with this book and her future work.

Not the book for me. Picked it up thinking I'd get female empowerment and an intriguing dystopian story, instead I got intense man-hate, poor writing and a barely there plot.

I've come to have high expectations of YA from Macmillan, but unfortunately this is a rare recent release that I really didn't like. It may have been the idiosyncratic writing style and odd mix of tone/voice, but I found the potential of its premise and details was let down in the execution of the narrative. i wanted more positive portrayals of feminism, more insight into the female-centric worldbuilding, but found the plot lost focus. Not a compelling or recommendable YA read.

Sigh. I had SUCH high hopes for this book and when I first heard about it I immediately requested a copy to review which I was lucky to get. I’m glad I did because honestly I probably wouldn’t spend my money on this book. I’m sure that some other people will love it but it just wasn’t really for me and I got to the end and just felt like the whole book lacked what I had been hoping for.

I thought the idea of a society where the world is being run by women after men have been wiped out by a disease was super interesting and I’m a fan of dystopian novels, normally. But this just didn’t really work. I thought this was going to be a wonderful feminist novel that I would love whole heartedly but it didn’t feel feminist to me at all. Erasing an entire gender to make women the ‘important’ ones is the complete opposite of feminism and equality. This book is like a manual for man hating but in an awful way. River is brought up in a society where she is taught that men are all dangerous and will rape, murder or attack her. To me this is such a dangerous idea to float around in a book, even in a dystopian world, and it just didn’t sit right with me.

When I got to the end of this book I was so very confused. There were so many moments where I thought ‘Ooh, this is the moment it will all make sense’ but I am still waiting. I’m not sure I really understand the dystopian society that has been created and so I couldn’t fully embrace the story itself. I almost felt that I had been dropped into the wrong part of this book and would have actually preferred to read more about the ‘before’. How did their society end up how it was? What triggered the disease? What sacrifices were made for the women to survive? Why did the disease only wipe out men? How did the world only being women mean wars came to an end? I just wanted more information so that I could understand this new world more. Just thinking about getting the answers to those questions makes me see how much I didn’t know about this world.

The characters were okay. I felt quite neutral about River, our narrator, but I did like Kate. I thought she was quite funny and sassy. River’s voice was very immature though and I just couldn’t connect with her.

All that said, I did read this book quite quickly and the writing style is fairly simple. I just question whether the fact I skim read some of this says it all? An excellent premise it just wasn’t executed how I had hoped.

"They said that," he murmured, "They said you was lost without us."
"We are not lost," she said, calmly, "We are running the world."
Sixty years after a virus wiped out almost every man and boy on the planet, teenager River is being brought up in the Matriarchy, a place where war has ended, greed and violence not tolerated, and empathy is the prized quality in a person.

Who Runs The World? has a brilliant premise and it is, for the most part, well executed. Because it's a middle grade/YA novel it's not always as complex as I would have liked and, as the pace picks up towards the end, things become over-complicated and under-explained. However, River is a great protagonist - well-rounded and sympathetic, although not always likeable - and the world that Bergin creates is entirely believable. A great feminist dystopia for readers aged 13+

I love books for the way they can drop a question into your mind, light a spark and leave you to examine it. Who Runs the World? by Virginia Bergin (Macmillan) is a book that does just that. It's a book that makes you think and, above all, question. What would it be like? What would I do? What do I believe?

'Welcome to the matriarchy. Sixty years after a virus has wiped out almost all the men on the planet, things are pretty much just as you would imagine a world run by women might be: war has ended; greed is not tolerated; the ecological needs of the planet are always put first. In two generations, the female population has grieved, pulled together and moved on, and life really is pretty good - if you're a girl. It's not so great if you're a boy, but fourteen-year-old River wouldn't know that. Until she met Mason, she thought they were extinct.'

There's a lot to love in this book. I was hooked from the very first page. No, before that. I was hooked before I'd finished reading the blurb. The concept of this book is so big and bold and I was afraid that the book wouldn't live up to it. But for me it totally did. Because Bergin hasn't tried to give us answers. Instead she has imagined and explored a scenario and created it in a way that draws the contemporary reader in and makes us think and imagine the answers for ourselves. She explores stereotypes and encourages us to think about how we perceive gender and society.

In Who Runs the World? Bergin has reimagined the teens and young adults of today's society as the grandmummas in her book. It's a brilliant device to enable her to use contemporary idiom in the book and to help us place ourselves in the story. We would be those grandmummas. We would be living that life and seeing through their eyes and experience. It also helps the reader to imagine our own futures and where we could be as a society. Where we want to be. What kind of a world we want to live in.

This is a book that you could race through and enjoy for it's story. But it is also a book that you can, and should, sit with. Take time over. Think about. Talk about. It's the kind of book that will give back what you put in. I wish it was out in the world earlier in the year so that lots of young adults could read it and think about the questions it raises and their own answers to those questions. Because this is a book that will make people want to have a voice and stand up to make their future better. And by the time they read this they will have missed their chance to vote to do so.

Easy enough to read but I found that more could have been done with the concept - the story felt very limited in terms of setting, and it seemed as if the author was rushing towards the end as the journey to find Mason's mother was wrapped up very quickly and a bit too neatly. I would also recommend finding a sensitivity reader that is knowledgeable about transgender issues - I didn't see anything that struck me as immediately harmful but the gender binary system and the xx/xy divide might throw up some red flags for some readers. However, I found it a decent read and would like to see more from the author.

I am not going to write a full review on here, just add some of the more offensive quotes. Along with the man hate, this is terribly written.

'.. See a penis, dangling. Scrotum. Weird, floppy things, all of them' What kind of terrible description is this?

'I try to imagine a world full of Masons. I cannot. I will not. It's horrible. It cannot be. Why would the Granmummas even want this?' It would be SO awful if there were men in this world! Diversity is an awful thing clearly.

'MAN
MEN
KNIVES
MURDER
RAPE
GUNS
WAR
KILL
DEATH' How on earth did this get past the editing process. A world where there is no crime or war because there are no men. Of course, no woman has ever committed a crime. Nobody challenges this until 78%. This. Is. Disgusting.

' "Men kill"
"Ok, name two"
"Oh- take your pick: rape, guns, knives, prisons, war. How about those?" Again- no woman has ever committed any crime. Only men do bad things.

'It's red, That blood. It's red. It's bright bloody red' What amazing powers of description! This is immediately after River has killed a man. Instead of there being discussion of this CRIME (which no women ever commit) there is some shocking description in which we learn that blood is red. Who knew!?

' " You're making it sound like he's a different species or something"
"He is!" No he isn't. This is not appropriately challenged.

'PINK
AND
BLUE
AND
WEIRD' Do I even have to comment on this?

'democra-zzzzzz' What on earth is this? There is no need for this. In an apparently more intelligent world, what has happened to basic spelling?

Other serious issues: River walks around in a small towel and is told that she has to cover up or Mason will rape her.
The second man River ever meets is violent towards her and apparently tries to rape her. She has never experienced any violence in her life because there are no men. THIS IS A DANGEROUS MESSAGE.
River sounds no older than 10, not 14. This is not a YA novel.
When River kills a man, everyone blames Mason and this is apparently completely acceptable?

This book backs up everything misogynists think feminism is. Man hate is not feminism. This book is disgusting.

Welcome to the Matriarchy - it's 60 years into the future, and women run the world.

From the Little Ones to the Teens, the Mummas and Grandmummas - there are only women. Men have been, for the most part, wiped out by a virus that women are immune to.

You can imagine 14 year old River's surprise, then, when she comes across a boy, Mason, in the woods. Who is he and how did he get there? Plus, what will this mean for society?

It's an interesting concept, and there are some really interesting moments - a discussion on what Mason's expectations are when it comes to women, in particular, rings very true. I think that Mason's idea of women could be very similar to a lot of 14 year old boys due to the portrayal of women in media - they have to be hair-free, they have to be pretty, they have to wear nice clothes, behave in a certain way.

One thing I really liked about the book was that there were no real physical descriptions given of the female characters. YA can be all about the "intense green eyes" sometimes so it was really refreshing that we were left to make up our own minds about appearances. As with Virginia's other books, there are some great witty moments - can you imagine a group of 75 year olds all sitting round singing a chart-topper from 2016? I also liked how it didn't automatically descend into insta-love.

Other parts of it didn't make sense to me (the real involvement of the women with the camps) and I would really have liked a little more information about Mason and who he was, I felt that the book wrapped up a little too quickly there.

An interesting read that raises interesting questions and maybe would be a good way for teenagers of both sexes to get a little introduction to gender, sexism, the patriarchy and misogyny.