Poster Girl

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.

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.