I’d like to start out by thanking Netgalley and the publisher, Hodder & Stoughton, for providing me with an ARC in exchange for this honest review.

Poster Girl was honestly a book that left me very pleasantly surprised. I didn’t go into it with very high expectations, but it’s actually one of the first books I’ve really enjoyed in a good long while. I’m not usually into dystopias or thrillers, but this book definitely made me want to dip my toes into the genres again at some point.

The book follows Sonya Kantor, the poster girl for a now fallen regime, has spent the last ten years of her life in the Aperture, the prison for the members of The Delegation who survived. But Sonya wasn’t just the face of an oppressive regime, but a willing and devoted participant in oppressive and hierarchical system, who reaped the benefits it gave to a lucky few.

With no family left alive, she now leads a relatively quiet and unremarkable life. That is until a familiar face from her past shows up with an offer she, in the end, cannot bring herself to refuse: find one of the children The Delegation stole from her family, the last little girl who has yet to be reunited with her family, and thus earn her freedom.

But finding this missing girl proves difficult, as Sonya must navigate an unfamiliar post-delegation world and uncover not only uncomfortable truths about herself and The Delegation, but also the secrets her family tried to take with them to the grave.

Poster Girl explores surveillance’s role in society, through the eyes of someone who grew up pampered by the system, but slowly opens her eyes to see how the system abused and manipulated people, including herself, through a system that rewarded ‘good behavior’ with coins, and just as easily took them away for ‘bad behavior’. But what exactly is good and bad behavior, and who gets to dictate what is down to the last minute detail?

I really loved how this book starts in the aftermath of a dystopian regime, which is a really interesting approach to the usual “bring down the government” type plots in dystopians. This story was also told through the lens of someone who grew up incredibly privileged and is coming to realize this, which also felt like a unique take on the genre. I also enjoyed how the new government clearly wasn’t flawless and still corrupt, just not to the same extent the first one was.

Sonya really grew on me as a character as she developed, which is honestly incredibly impressive, considering just how short this book actually is. Just a little less than 300 pages. I especially enjoyed watching her slowly realize just how bad The Delegation actually was and how people she knew and cared for played into this.

Surprisingly the book also had a bit of romance, and again Roth really managed to deliver. It was a simmering slow burn, which somehow still managed to work despite how few pages it played out over. I was rooting for them to get together and I was missing the scenes between them when they were apart. I loved how both she and Alexander got to have a better understanding of their younger selves and come to terms with some of the things they did back then.

The story had some incredible twists and had me on the edge of my seat quite a few times, especially as some scenes got pretty intense. I also found that the story had a generous amount of thought provoking quotes about society, surveillance, data collecting, algorithm and even how society socializes people assigned a certain gender at birth to a certain behavior and role, which I really appreciated. I found that it had some well written themes of redemption as well and while Sonya is definitely not forgiven for her actions, which she shouldn’t be, we still get to see her become a better person and try to make up for her mistakes.

Overall it’s a book I would definitely recommend and might even read again, just to see the threads of foreshadowing, which I might have missed, weave into the text and create an image of where the ending actually went.

Review will also be up on my Instagram, @Kratist0, shortly

I was pretty sure that this was going to be a 5-star review from the first two pages and I wasn't wrong. Roth has such a brilliant way of delivering genuine characters and her world-building is outstanding. I also feel that this is a more adult novel and less YA. This is a great progression for a writer - to show she can write out with the genre she is associated with.

Honestly, I'm worried if I write too much there will be a spoiler so I'll just say this is fantastic deep dive into the themes of loss and abandonment after an oppressive dictatorship falls leaving a vacuum for many people on both sides of the political fence. This is Roth at her best. Crisp, economic writing leaves room for the reader's imagination to flourish without feeling lost. Absolutely 5 stars and highly recommended. Thank you to Netgalley and William Morrow for the ARC.

Veronica Roth was a big author for me with her Divergent series when I was a teenager, so I was interested to see what an older protagonist would be like. Sonya still felt very juvenile to me but you could see elements that brought in more maturity than is usually seen in YA novels.

This was a standard dystopian standalone with Orwellian elements that I enjoyed. The set-up was personally great, however I felt the pace of the book never seemed to pick up. I didn't feel like I was rooting for any of the characters which took some of the meat out of the plot twists that seemed to be around each corner.

Overall, this was a good book to escape in for a few hours and is definitely a throwback to the 2000s dystopian themes that were absolutely everywhere.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for sending me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Poster Girl follows Sonya, who used to be the Poster Girl for the Delegation, an oppressive regime. After a revolution the regime has fallen and Sonja is imprisoned. After 10 years she gets the opportunity to make a deal: find a missing girl in exchange for freedom.

This book has a very solid setup and world building. However, I found the characters and plot a little underdeveloped, the pacing is rather slow.

I did enjoy the mystery aspect and that there were some interesting nods to our contemporary society.

I do have a question though: What does “Poster Girl” even mean? I mean, what’s the point and the consequence of Sonya being on those propaganda posters?

Overall this book had a great concept, but it didn’t quite deliver in the execution. While I generally enjoyed it, I couldn’t help but want a bit more.

Veronica Roth, probably still best known for her YA Divergent series, continues to move into a more adult-oriented mode with her latest book Poster Girl. While her last book Chosen Ones, explored the world of heroes when there is no more heroics do be done, Poster Girl is post-dystopian. That is not to say the new world is in anyway utopian, but Poster Girl opens on and explores a world in which a repressive, rules and surveillance based regime did exist but has been overthrown.
Sonya Kantor lives in the Aperture, a kind of open air prison for those who were associated with the old, repressive regime known as The Delegation. When she was sixteen, Sonya had literally been the poster girl for The Delegation, her face plastered around the city so much so that ten years on and people still call her “poster girl”. During the rule of The Delegation, every person had an implant behind their eyes called an Insight, a device used to monitor behaviour and assign social credit scores to every citizen. Now only those in the Aperture still have Insights which allows their jailers to monitor their movements. Sonya is content to live out her life in the Aperture until Alexander, an old friend, who turned on his family in the revolution, appears and offers her an out – help track down a missing child, taken from her parents during the Delegation era, and she will be given her freedom. And so begins Sonya’s investigation of the post-Delegation world, an investigation that will take her back into her childhood and the secrets of both the Delegation and the regime that has replaced it.
Sonya is a flawed heroine with plenty of skeletons in her closet, and her investigation goes further in developing her understanding of the damage that the Delegation did to her and, through her, to others. She was not just the face of the old regime, but a willing participant in and beneficiary of its repressive and hierarchical system. So she has plenty to atone for but also a more clear-eyed way of looking at the world that has replaced the one she knew. As with Chosen Ones, through Sonya and Alexander, Roth explores what it means to be an adult, to develop a more complete understanding of your younger self and to come to terms with some of the more stupid or thoughtless things that you might have done as a teenager or young adult.
Poster Girl is a dark novel but it is never dour or depressing. By taking a post-dystopian society, Roth sets up a complex world and then digs into those complexities. In doing so she questions the role of technology in our lives and the pervasiveness of celebrity and media, and considers how we strike the balance between gathering and sharing information and universal surveillance. And there are threads of redemption here, of people striving to make a broken but recovering world better by coming to terms with their past, or at least making peace with it. This is another interesting turn from Roth who, post YA is continuing to challenge her readership.

There was a time when the mere word 'dystopian' would have made me predisposed to like a book of this genre; these days I think it might be the opposite, but this wasn't a half bad attempt at rehabilitating some of its originality, should you be in the mood for it.

Pleased to report this book doesn't have much in common with Divergent: Poster Girl is a more mature take on the possible future of humanity, and deeply unsettling in how plausible and morally gray the whole 'Big Brother is watching you (and you're actually mostly okay with that)' concept is in this world. Still, to me it seemed more like a personal growth-and-discovery journey of the main character, Sonya, than a thought-provoking exercise meant to question the merits of this or that government system or different sets of moral values. Through Sonya, we learn about the world as she lived it (the Delegation with its rigid rules and a complex reward system), mourn it in a resigned habitual way of someone who's been imprisoned for a decade, then explore the new world ruled by the Triumvirate and uncover some rather uncomfortable truths, upsetting to Sonya on both personal and existential levels.

For some reason, I was sure that this was going to be an action book of sorts - it's not that, but I found the slower, more thoughtful pace to be the better choice for this type of narrative. Personally, I would've wanted to learn more about the government systems Roth envisioned, both old and new, and this world in general, but since we see it all through one character's eyes it's inevitably not a full picture. Again rather inevitably, the focus remains on Sonya throughout the book, while other characters are few and occasionally seem a bit 2D.

Thanks to #Netgalley and the publisher for an arc of #PosterGirl.

I wanted to like this, and there were some elements I really enjoyed, like the world-building and dialogue. But I found the pacing and Sonya’s motivations as a character to be a bit scattered. I kind of get the sense that Veronica Roth hasn’t quite gotten out of that “YA bubble” with her books for adults.

This short dystopian tale packs a powerful punch in under 300 pages. After the fall of the Delegation regime, the families of prominent members are imprisoned in the Aperture. Sonya was the poster girl of the regime at only sixteen years old and, a decade later, she finds herself ready to face the truth about the Delegation, her family, and her complicity.

Questions about technology, government, and family permeate the story and force us to hold a mirror to our society. Sonya was such a well-written character, challenging the reader to put themself in her shoes and allowing them to realise there are no easy answers. Thought-provoking, heartwrenching, and haunting.

Sonya was the face of a Delegation propaganda movement as a teenager, and now she languishes as a prisoner of the regime that replaced it, for the crime of being a valuable member of the world that came before. But, when given the opportunity to right one of the wrongs of the Delegation, she starts to uncover things about her family.

This is quite a depressing book - unlike most dystopian novels, Sonya is not part of the Revolution - she was part of the problem. However, it is very clear that nobody is on the right side, and we're all just human. I really enjoyed this fresh take on quite an overdone genre, and found Sonya to be sympathetic if not totally likeable.

Veronica Roth is an excellent author, and this is one of her best books yet.

I received a copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I had heard a lot of conversation about this book because it is suspected to be an upcoming subscription box. I was definitely intrigued looking at the cover because it doesn't necessarily look like a typical fantasy book that I would read; but after checking the synopsis I was definitely intrigued.

This is a dystopian novel which actually focuses on the aftermath of the fall of a dystopian society where everyone was watched by the government through an insight, much like a microchip. It gave lots of black mirror vibes where people’s personality and behaviour was shaped by the insight and ‘descoin’ earned when they did what was deemed good in the insights eyes. For those in power, or those with wealth they had better access to the advantages of this system whereas everyone else did not benefit or thrive, which in turn caused the uprising. The fall in this society is where we meet Sonya, the daughter of a prominent figure in the government whose whole family died during the uprising and she has been sent to life in prison in the Aperture.

The changes in the new government has meant that those who were children when they were sent to the Aperture can now be released but Sonya just misses the age limit. To be fair, the government choose to throw her an opportunity - if she finds a missing child then she will be given her freedom.

I really enjoyed this story and there were quite a few twists that were so subtly placed I really didn’t expect them. It is quite a short book which I think made the whole story feel fast paced and kept you intrigued to the end. I would definitely recommend this book.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this arc.

sorry what was that? a dystopian novel by the queen of dystopia herself veronica roth? with a strong female character? sign. me. up.

i love dystopian novels because they make me feel UNCOMFORTABLE and this did exactly that. a society after an uprising against a government watching every move you make - sonya is kept in the aperture - a cut off prison type city for those who were part of the delegation before the overthrow. the poster girl herself, sonya, too old to be released yet the youngest in the aperture, is our protagonist - and is given a task. find the girl for her freedom.

this book gave me 1984/black mirror vibes and i really enjoyed it - the thing that grips me about a dystopian novel is if i think “wow this could be our world in a few years” and boy did i feel this multiple times throughout.

I enjoyed the world building, finding out a lot about the past regime really helped build a picture of the current world and what remains. I also loved the fact that sonya is morally grey, not only was she a literal poster girl she was also a metaphorical one; she lived and breathed the old regime and still today hasn’t managed to quite shake those behaviours.

i would like to have learned more about those in the aperture, who they were before the uprising and how they contributed to the delegation. i feel like roth gives us an introduction to some great characters but then doesn’t really elaborate. i was also half expecting slightly more action but maybe that’s just because i was expecting something divergent or hunger games-esque. to me it was a mystery novel under the guise of dystopia.

but it satisfied my dystopia heart and made me feel like i was in 2014 again. a page turner, for sure!

I'm sure many of us recognise Veronica Roth from the Divergent days. While this novel is also set in a dystopia, this book felt much more directed towards older readers. There's no sugarcoating the world sonya lives in, its grimy, its raw, and yet, it feels realistic. Its not unbelievable to see this sort of world forming. A state of people who's every action is monitoring and appraised and whose behaviours have values assigned. It took a couple chapters for me to settle into this book, a load of new, unfamiliar terminology is used at the start. However I'm glad I stuck with it. It leaves you unsure for so long who is right and wrong in everything, and there are several unexpected twists I encountered throughout, which I had not suspected and really enjoyed. Definetely worth a read for any dystopian fans out there, but be prepared to question yourself, what's right, what's wrong and what's truly freedom.

I love Veronica Roth and couldn’t wait to get dragged in to another dystopian world. Not going to lie the first few chapters took awhile to get into and I wasn’t sure this was going to be a book for me. However I continued on and I’m so glad I did! Sonya starts off as a fairly boring character. Sullen and just not an exciting person but then she’s given a task to reunite a young girl with her family and Sonya really comes into her own.
I really enjoyed this and I had no idea where the story was going to take me 👀 it definitely makes you sit and think about the direction the world is going and what “could” possibly become a reality in the not so distant future. Scary…

I did not know how much I was missing dystopian stories n my reading stack until I picked up Poster Girl. I´m glad I did, it is an easy, fun read, with mystery and all the gloom you expect from dystopian story.
Thank you NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for the access to the eARC in exchange for my honest opinion. All opinions are my own.

Sonya Kantor will soon be the youngest resident of the Aperture. Once she lived a privileged life of wealth and respectability, a rare second child for a family in favour. Her father worked for the ruling party, the Delegation. When the revolution came, however, the surviving members of the Delegation, and their families, were thrown into this prison community where Sonya has now lived for 10 years.

And then she’s given a surprising offer: find this missing girl for us, and we’ll let you out permanently. Sonya doesn’t know why her, but she’s willing to try. But the world outside is not what she remembers. A new society has risen, one that is reverting to older tech rather than the brain implanted ‘Insight’: the internet in your head, but also a permanent surveillance device. Every action was tracked, rewarded or punished. Lose coin for raising your voice, gain coin for sitting demurely – or for turning dissenters and rule breakers over to the authorities.

Like many people, I knew the name Veronica Roth from the Divergent series. This is another dystopia, another society held with rigid rules, but it’s a far more grown up affair. Sonya’s world is dark, grim and almost hopeless. There are no jumping-off-buildings action scenes here, but rather a lot of very deep questions about human nature, freedom, and the concept of right and wrong.

It’s also a mystery. As Sonya tries to discover what happened to the missing girl, she’s exposed to a shady underbelly of the new society, as well as discovering dark secrets about the previous one, the one into which she fit so well. Each step raises more questions, as well as pushing Sonya to darker, more raw parts of her own psyche and her past.

As well as being a gripping read, this is the kind of book that challenges you to think. There is so much to unpack here, so many slightly uncomfortably allegories to our own time. It’s easy to see how Google and Apple and wearable tech of all kinds could end up as Insight, and so many ways in which this isn’t the great idea they think it is – and really, bar the brain implanting, we’re pretty much hitting most of them already. There’s also the question – raised outright in the book – of what exactly ‘right and wrong’ mean, when so much changes depending on who’s in charge.

But overall it’s just an enthralling story that kept me wanting to find out more. Recommended, and not just – or particularly for, tbh – fans of Divergent.

A huge thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with this eArc!

I was cautious going into this, as I have previously read dystopians that have disappointed me. But this felt fresh! A dystopian adult book (although I would classify it as “new adult”) that explored more topics than YA would touch upon.

I started this book with some trepidation as I have a love / hate relationship with dystopian fiction but I liked the premise of the story and my goodness I absolutely loved everything about it.
The story starts with Sonia Kantor who has been imprisoned after a revolution in a place called the aperture when after 10 years she is given the chance of freedom if she can find a missing girl who was stolen from her parents and so starts an extraordinary tale that had me in tears when I finished it.
The writing of this book was just amazing I haven’t read anything by Veronica Roth before but am now definitely going to read her previous books and any future books. The characters were all so well described, the feeling of big brother is watching you was scarily real and descriptions of life in the aperture were grim.
So a book I can’t fault and I’m so glad I took the chance and read it, 5 huge stars and well recommended.
My thanks to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for giving me the chance to read the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

This book would be a great entry way into dystopian fiction for older middle grade/young, young adult readers. The book follows a girl trying to make sense of the world she lives in.