A definitely interesting look at a lot of different people fully worthy of being written and talked about. However, I did find that the writing style wasn't really my cup of tea. The narrators, however, were perfectly fine.

The people featured in this book were indeed gender rebels and well deserving of being highlighted, but the author's tone and writing style did not do them justice. In fact, it did the tome a disservice.

Really interesting in concept and content, extremely well written, but did not work for me as an audiobook. I would recommend getting the physical book on this one. There’s an intense, rushed quality to the reading of this that did not work tor me personally when getting into very detailed history stories. I don’t want to hurt the books rating, so I’m not docking points, but I would not recommend it in this format

Thank you to NetGalley and W.F. Howes Ltd for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

I really liked the concept of this book, but after finding out how much praise for JK Rowling there is in this book, I will not be reading it. Apologies for any wasted time.

Gender Rebels

This book covered different women throughout history who challenged gender norms and made an impact on the world. Reading the synopsis, this book sounded right up my alley. Feminism, women in history, yes please! And in some ways, it was just as advertised.

What I liked:
I liked that it covered so many women that I hadn’t heard of, some I have. I love to learn and there was a lot of really interesting information in collection.

It felt well researched, and the individuals the author wrote about were varied through time and place in history.

What I didn’t like:
The author tried to make it fun? She used a lot of slang and made a lot of cheeky comments. It was just too much. It really felt like she was trying too hard to be cute or funny and it really fell flat. It took away from the really great information she was sharing.

Overall, it was good, informative, and not your typical history type book. I just could have done without the cringe-worthy attempt at humor and wit.

The narrators were so varied which I absolutely loved (Maya Jama being a favourite). I really enjoyed hearing about all these feminist figures, but not sure how good the content is for an audiobook - it reads much more like a coffee table book.

A truly interesting concept for a book but unfortunately the writing style was not my cup of tea. Maybe a younger reader would enjoy it better.

This book is everything I would normally love, and at least it is a list of fascinating people to research further. The book itself however? Extremely disappointing and so frustrating to listen to. I listened to the audiobook narrated by the author herself, Maya Jama, Suranne Jones and Gemma Cairney, and the narrators do a decent job with what is very poor material.
The author sounds like someone trying to use modern slang without actually understanding it, and insists on giving the people "cool" nicknames which in my opinion frequently came across as disrespectful. A lot of the time there was barely any information about the actual person, which was extremely disappointing.
In the end I gave up half-way through as I found myself getting too frustrated with the content.

Gender Rebels by Anneka Harry

First of all: This audiobook has fantastic narrators who I absolutely loved listening to.

The book introduces the stories of 50 women that you might or might not be familiar with. We are told the stories of diverse, daring and progressive women and gender rebels who did not always agree with society’s views on women and their place within it.

I was really looking forward to this book/audiobook and expected a whole lot of it. The variety of personalities and characters that were introduced was great and some of them I knew of (e.g.Joan of Arc or the Brontës) but most of them were unknown to me and I enjoyed learning about them. However, I really struggled with the style of the writing. It’s very casual and sometimes tends to sound like a teenage magazine in its register. Overall, I did like the concept of highlighting important historical LGBTQ+ people but cannot quite say I recommend the book wholeheartedly.

Most of the stories narrated in this book are really inspiring and many are revealing to me. I appreciate the attempt to bring the stories to the attention of readers interested in gender related literature.

However, the book could have done better by making the writing a bit more formal (for lack of a better term) rather than playful. Most of the time the illustration of the characters are less impactful due to the playful nature of the narration.

I experienced this book in its audio version. True enough the author read this in a playful manner. Maybe it is just me but I like it more to sound a bit more formal or academic.

The cast of this audiobook is absolutely stunning and the stories within are magnificent. A really fascinating and compelling read.

I really wanted to like this book, really, really, but I struggled with the narration. The first was too gushy and I just couldn't cope with all the superlatives. It's a shame because the content was interesting.

I was looking forward to getting this book and the audio version really appealed to me with the wide range of narrators all of whom do a great job. The book itself is an interesting collection of often overlooked members of the LGBTQ+ community who blazed trails in their time but the writing style wasn't great and I felt I was reading a book written for a teenager gender studies class project.

I feel the subjects deserved better but, to end on a positive note, I did learn a lot about a number of people whose stories are being shared in the mainstream for the first time and that visibility is important.

So I loved reading this but looking at reviews a lot of people REALLY don't like it (and that's okay)

I'm going to tell you why I did like it... Its a funny take on history. It doesn't try to take itself seriously. Its here to introduce these women and trans men to the general public who maybe doesn't like reading history in an approachable way. This is not an end all be all historical representation of each person mentioned. Its just a taste in hopes that the reader might go on to study more. This is a very "coffee table" type of book.

Are some of the jokes problematic and/or man hating? Yeah but its supposed to be skewed towards the power of these individual women and trans men in a male dominated world. Some of the women and trans men in this book are really awful people, doing some shitty things that shouldn't be excused or glorified and the author doesn't ... fault the problems of their actions, its all woman power and for that it loses a star.

I listened to this MOSTLY as an audio book that I received free of charge in exchange for an honest review from Netgalley. There were issues with the audio book where I could not get specific chapters to play but a Netgalley rep has confirmed that this issue was due to their app and not a problem with the audiobook itself. I went back and read the chapters I couldn't listen to and I honestly liked hearing this more than reading it. The narrators were wonderful.

I feel bad for having requested this because it's really not my kind of book. I saw Gender Rebels and got excited, but this kind of format always seems to miss out for me. Great as an online resource, blog, feed...but it just seems too much in one book. Again, this not great review is on me not the book necessarily.

what i expected: a well-sourced collection of biographical essays featuring an intersectional array of non-cis men (i.e. women, non-binary, and trans folx).

what i got: a dubiously-sourced collection of flippantly-written essays occasionally lauding the featured "woman," but more often than not centered around the author lambasting the patriarchy and promoting second-to-third-wave feminism.

i question where the author found her information; i am no historian, but i remember learning in 6th grade that the false beards that ALL pharaohs wore were to imitate god-of-the-dead osiris and indicate they themselves were a living god (http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/beards.htm, https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/50076/why-did-egyptian-pharaohs-wear-false-beards). hatshepsut was not special for wearing one just because she was female and the author’s claim that the “trad-masc” status quo forced her to do so is blatantly false.

furthermore, the author has little working knowledge of trans identities. of the few trans men in the book, the author deadnames them in their chapter titles and continues dead naming and misgendering them until she sees fit to introduce their trans-ness as shock value. the author did not see fit to include any trans women or non-binary folx, though i can think of several off-hand who would be considered rebels. (for an example of a piece of writing that treats dr. james barry with respect, see: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jul/25/secret-transgender-victorian-surgeon-feted-by-heritage-england.)

i also found it rather frustrating that for all her lambasting of men and the patriarchy, the author seems to renounce femininity and avoided highlighting femme women who were still rebellious in their own right. a classic example is ada lovelace, mother of computer programming, who still wore poofy dresses and elaborate hairdos and was altogether quite feminine in appearance (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ada-Lovelace).

in summary, this book presents a decent list of people to look up, but i would not recommend actually reading it.

as a note, i listened to the audiobook and had some trouble with several of the chapters not playing properly. i am unsure whether this problem was due to netgalley or due to the files themselves. this issue did not impact my review.

thank you to net galley and w.f. howes ltd for an e-audio-arc in exchange for an honest review.

I think the multiple narrators was a wise choice for this audiobook - it gave multiple voices to the source material and stopped it becoming stale.

It also featured a lot of people I hadn’t heard of before meaning I left the book with ideas of who to read more about.

However, I can’t say that I loved this book. It was trying to be funny, but in a try too hard way, almost like a Buzzfeed article. I do appreciate the need for engaging humour to get the information across, but if that comes at the expense of the actual informative part of the book then the book is less effective.

With some editing and a preference for facts over funnies this could be a really great book.

I tried, I really did. I am not someone who does not finish books they have offered to review, it always seems to me a core part of the contract. But this is unbearable. I struggled through the introduction but after 5 minutes of the first chapter one something was going out of the (figurative) window, either this book or myself. The concept, short historical narratives of otherwise overlooked women, is of interest, and I appreciated that there was some effort made to recognise that perhaps not all of these figures would have considered themselves "cis" under our own terms or those of the day. That said, this part of the introduction seems to make specific effort not to suggest that any of these figures may have been trans-men and even George Eliot is identified under her birth name. This is not in itself the reason why this book is unbearable, but a feature that immediately dates it prior even to its publication.

No, this is unbearable for its writing. It's the most cringeworthy thing I've ever heard (and I say this as a Succession fan). It's like your geography teacher trying to rap. Keeping up with the Hatshupset's? Willy waving? Side-pieces? I'm all for a little irony but for it to function it needs to be an accent to the story, not the whole piece.

Just give up and go read Horrible Histories.

When I saw this book, I jumped at the chance to read and review it. I was looking forward to reading (Or listening to rather, as this was the audiobook) about more kick-arse women in history and LGBTQIA+ woman. I already knew that many times in history that women dressed as lived as men in order to do what they wanted to and to love who they loved. It still surprises me how they managed to do it and pass as a man (I'm a trans man and found it hard to pass pre-transition, so I'm in awe of those that can pass naturally)

I wanted to love this book, I love history and I find things like this very interesting. However, I feel like this book is aimed at maybe teens more than adults. The book is full of jokes and slang terms. The style it's written in is very informal, which there is nothing wrong with. But some of the jokes were too many, where I kind of lost sight of who the chapter was about. and the information being told. I love non-fiction books that are informal and feel more like a talk with friends than reading (or listening) to something from a page, but I feel like if this was a conversation, I would constantly be asking for them to repeat what they said. This could just be because I listened to the audiobook, instead of reading it. I looked up reviews before I typed this to see if I was the only one, but this seems to be a common issue. I agree that the writing style isn't for me and maybe it's my age (24) and that this is aimed for slightly younger people, who may find the writing style to be easy to read and understand.

*received audiobook for free from netgalley for honest review* The information in this book is really interesting but I honestly don't think I could have read this book and even the audiobook was a bit much at times. they certainly are enthusiastic though