Only Ever Yours Paperback – March 8, 2016

It’s hard leaving a 4 star review on a book you hated, but loved. It has much meaning and a powerful view. This is a book for someone who loves social experiences and psychology even at the expense of humans. It is a little disturbing with no happy ending and will leave you sad. But it’s a great book. It’s not happy and rainbows but a reality check slapped you across the face type of book lol

This story is about the perfect utopia world that really is more of a dystopian world. The main character is Frieda or number #630. Well Frieda comes from a perfect society where Rich men rule and Women are only ever use for baby making or for being a concubine. All women are taught that all they want to be is wives. As the book continues it shows you that our world is a lot like the society in this book. For example how our old society traditions are put forth even in modern times. This book reminded me of the Hunger Games Series, in the way it describes the world and how history can be seen in it.Now I must warn you as I read this book it was unbelievably painful. I felt a mixture of emotions for what Frieda was facing, while she was learning how to agree with her dystopian society standards. I finally realize the emotions where coming because I have seen these standards, maybe not as extreme as present in this book but I have seen similar standards among society today. For example women are told, even in modern times, that your life will be a happier one if marriage and kids are involved. How by doing those simple things, you will contribute to the world and make it better. To be honest I don't believe society realizes how such standards exist because they have been around for so longing the world history. This book also help me to understand so many things I do that are double standards and those realizations hurt like heck. I was always told that the things that hurt you the most usually help change you the most. I am hoping that this book has change me in some ways, for the better. I think that even though this book was painful, it should be read by both men and women. It is a classic in the making, for me. This book should be read in every junior high and high school as assignment, because its will change the world.The reason for the four out of five stars is because there where a few things, that I was unsure about as I read the book. Also a few things in the book that I wish had been more talked about such as some of the abusive relationships with a few of the characters. But overall an excellent must read hands down

Wow, the world that Louise O'Neill creates puts even The Handmaid's Tale to shame. It was scary and creepy and so disturbing. Freida lives in a world where women are appreciated for beauty and nothing else. These women are created in labs. They are then are raised in schools and taught how to please a man. They are raised to be either a companion or a concubine A companion is the wife of a "Inheritant" and her only duty is to give birth to sons until the age of 40, at which point she has a "termination date" so her beauty is always preserved. A concubine lives with many other women and never has children, but is there solely for the sexual pleasure of men. The girls in the school all have eating disorders because they are told repeatedly that "fat woman must be obsolete." These girls are so mean to each other. They put each other down if they are too fat and they put each other down if they are too skinny These women are told repeatedly that men didn't like women who cried, men didn't like women who were angry or showed emotion of any kind, men don't like women who are academic, etc.I felt equal parts frustrated and sad for Frieda. She would make these decisions that would make me want to scream at her. But I could also relate to her. I don't live in the kind of world Frieda does (thank goodness) and yet, I think all the same ugly things about myself that Frieda does. It's sad. Towards the end, when she was striving so hard to become a companion I could feel her desperation so strongly. The ending left me just as frustrated as the entire book. It is not the kind of book that leads to a satisfying resolution, much like The Handmaid's Tale. But this is a book that you need to read. This book will stay with me for a very long time.I received the ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review

First of all let me say that I am an adult and I know this book is meant for young adults, but the story could have been betterThe book begins with a group of young women in a dystopian society that literally grows women to be either the mate, concubine, or teacher. The girls we are introduced to are teens that are vying for the few positions of mates to a small group of young men. The story leaves to many details out. We never understand how the girls are raised, how they are made, why there are so few of them, why the roles are not already assigned, why they are forced to compete. There are slight racial and homophobic undertones with the protagonist being "darker" than the other girls, and she fears she is a homosexual because she had feelings for a friend. If darker skin is an unwanted trait wouldn't it be bred out. The girls are encouraged to be shallow, and unintelligent but are clearly literate and strong. If the goal is to create perfect mates for the few men that will be mated wouldn't the scientists just create them perfectly. The girls are portrayed as lab experiments but are treated as if they have free will. The best friend of the protagonist does the unthinkable, in a society where no person would even have the knowledge to do what she did. It really just didn't make a ton of sense.I treated myself to this book and was dissatisfied, I think I was expecting something a little deeper but this was just ok. It would be good for preteen girls that are obsessed with boys, looks and social media.

This story is gripping and compelling. I couldn't stop reading it, however it leaves one with a bitter after taste hence the 3 star rating. The book is set in a dystopian future, women are genetically engineered strictly depending on how many boys are given birth to that year and can only be one of three options, a companion (wife until the age of 40 when they are terminated), concubine or a nun/teacher in the School where ALL girls are deposited. The sole focus is on looks and anorexic level weight, perpetual social rating based on looks and appearance. Any form of intellectual activity is banned and the girls are bombarded day and night with subliminal messages about how being fat is the worst crime they could commit. The heroine suffers from eating disorders and cripplingly low self esteem. Her best friend who was always a perfect ten for some reason plummets down and yet she is never reprimanded for it. The other girls circle her like sharks and while she ignores them all including shutting the heroine out, the heroine it must be said is too ethically weak to ever take a stand. In fact so weak is she, pathetically trying to win the approval of a girl one can clearly see is yearning to shove her off a cliff, never once defending her erstwhile friend and even stooping to trolling her along with the others and leaving her voice mails telling her to kill herself that its disgusting. The protagonist MUST have some admirable quality. Or if she is so weak then at least she needs to redeem herself in some way. This girl is so idiotic and contemptible. She craves for approval even though she's gorgeous, she joins in bullying and taunting and when finally SPOILER ALERT: the main character Darwin who is a massive catch openly prefers her to the villain Megan and he confides a huge secret to her what does the fool do? She races to tell Megan the secret when there are just a few days left for the choosing ceremony when she can finally be out of the school forever. However even this isn't my main gripe against the author. She's tried to make it like 1984, but not being a George Orwell she can't pull off such a bleak, despairing, dismal,depressing end in which EVERYONE comes to a horrific end, the nasty ones truly triumph, the sadistic ones get to happily watch the destruction, dystopian society remains messed up and dystopian. For once WHY can't you have a character strong and smart enough to figure out how to resolve issues and change it? Otherwise whats the POINT?? I guessed her friend Isabel's secret but frankly the author couldn't manage to execute her plot properly.

Louise O'Neill has a wonderful imagination which she shows to us through her impeccable writing.The Surface Breaks is a work of genius, a beautiful dark tale creating a perfect vision for the reader.Asking For It provides an absolute reality with that perfect ending, how it really would end.Louise gave us an excellent explanation of this at the end of her book.Only Ever Yours like all of her books is unique and again leads with a young girl up against what it's like to be a girl in this world, whether that be past, present or future. In this case, the future.When i reached the end of the book i knew i would have to digest and let my thoughts process fully before i review.I knew it was my least favourite book of Louise's and I couldn't give it the usual 5 Stars.But this is Louise O'Neill, she's a genius!My disappointment had nothing to do with the outcome of the story, or it's toxicity and hopelessness narrative. It's because it was so drawn out and my anticipation for what it was all working up towards was an anti climax for me. But, the final scene was most impressive albeit very brutal and totally unexpected.Again, this is the reality, Louise's fictional story set in the real world.So yes, Louise is a genius, putting aside the lack of substance through the long drawn out pages, her writing is done with such precision thus creating more in the way of feelings rather than a vision.I found it difficult to 'see' the environment and the people that surrounded the central character Freida. There were far too many characters to keep up with, but that was ok, i only needed to get an idea, i didn't need to see them individually.The environment was too futuristic and claustrophobic to open my mind to see it.So it came to feelings, of empathy for Freida who is written in first person. I felt so sorry for her throughout. I felt the miserable environment.Even though it was so drawn out, i still couldn't put the book down, it didn't tire or frustrate me unlike every other drawn out book I've read, it's her writing, it's so unique with the feelings it produced from Freida in this eerie environment and of course her style which kept me hooked.Only Louise can conjure up such phrases as:We talked so much like the words were too hot to swallow.It was an accident when i said that!So did you trip up and let the words fall out of your mouth?I stole myself out of bed.Only From Louise O'Neill

I read this book in a day because it was so intense! For a book with a Barbie doll on the cover, it's not fun or happy-go-lucky as you'd think.Only Ever Yours is set in some future UK where girl babies can no longer be conceived naturally. So, the females (eves) are made in labs and designed to be perfect for the men. A girl in this world has three options (not that she's the one who gets to pick): become a companion to a man who choses her and bear him sons, become a concubine for the pleasure of whichever men wants them, or become a chastity, which is like a nun/teacher in the centre where the girls are brought up.The females in the novel don't even warrant a capital letter at the start of their names.The book takes place entirely in the centre where the girls are raised and it's a heightened version of school that any girl will recognise. All the subtle bullying, passive aggressive friendships, and social anxiety is exacerbated because the girls are competing with each other for beauty rankings. The whole place is covered with mirrors and the girls are asked to compare each other on a regular basis.This book covers some dark topics like anxiety, eating disorders, body image issues and mental breakdowns and it's surprisingly bleak for a YA novel.My copy has the tagline "A girl to own forever", but I think that's quite misleading because the book is about this horrific and harsh "girl world" in the eve centre and the men who will own the girls only show up later in the book. And so, it's not all about the relationship between men and women in this warped future, it's about the relationships women have with each other - always comparing bodies and looks, and always trying to decide whose better.This is a creepy and haunting read that I would definitely recommend!

This book is many things: it's compelling; it's timely; it's relatable, often painfully so; and it is intensely readable.What it is not, however, is particularly well-written.The world it is set in is a relentlessly bleak and frightening one, but it is not especially plausible as a setting. Think about any aspect of it too long or too hard and you'll probably find yourself realizing that it doesn't make a lot of sense. Though we're constantly reminded, for instance, that women are essentially euthanized at forty at the very most, with older men encouraged to trade in their 'companions' at the first suggestion of underperformance and take another teenage bride immediately afterward, there are no older men among the group of ten who come to pick wives from the girls at the heroine's school - and no sign that the system is set up to accommodate them. Why, in a society facing resource shortages and a very real population bottleneck, are almost three-quarters of the population expected to do absolutely nothing but have children with or sexually service the remaining quarter, anyway? And why, when all the women are bred to be stunningly beautiful, are so many of the men who share half their genetic code with mothers who look like literal supermodels so unfortunate-looking? For the sake of brevity I won't go on, but many other aspects of the world-building are equally flimsy and every bit as likely to unravel when incautiously poked.This is also not a subtle story, battering it's message home with all the delicacy of a brick to the face. Female characters are named after modern actresses and models who are famous mostly for their looks. Their forenames are not capitalized, and nor are the names of any of the groups or castes they're separated into. The men get the names of leaders and intellectuals and inventors, and initial capitals to go with them. Though no functional society in the world has ever been as restrictive and regimented as the one the characters live in and still survived, the only roles permitted to the women in Only Ever Yours are '1950s housewife and mother of sons', 'slack-jawed, dead-eyed sex worker' and 'abusive Blues Brothers nun', with every single profession - even the traditionally female ones - now strictly off-limits. A girl band perform under a name offensive enough it'd probably trigger Amazon's profanity filter. Girls discuss how attractive they find a male celebrity who beats his wife on live TV. There's a brief appearance by a male star who raps about how great he is is while five naked women in collars and leashes crawl around him... and it goes on like this, as if the author is afraid we wouldn't quite understand how relentlessly misogynistic this all is without constant reminders.Then again, the story seems unwilling to leave anything at all open to interpretation, with character and consistency sacrificed for the sake of making an obvious point even more so. The narrator, for instance, occasionally discusses concepts she would by rights deliberately have been kept ignorant about and should have no real comprehension of, still less the language to articulate. Why would a girl who was intentionally raised to know nothing she wouldn't need to keep her looking decorative, acting docile, and servicing men ever have heard the word "whitewashing", still less be able to use it correctly in a sentence? Lest there be any doubt, I don't object at all to the story's criticism of the racial bias inherent in modern beauty standards. This is an important issue and I'm glad that a novel about the hopelessness of trying to live up to them raises it. This is, however, a narrator who has never been taught to read or write, who is not encouraged to be critical of or even curious about her world, and is established on page as not knowing what maths is. Specifically mentioning whitewashing, by name, felt like the authorial voice being privileged over the narrator's. Surely it was possible to discuss these concepts without falling back on language the protagonist simply shouldn't be able to use? It's jarring, and every time it happened it threw me out of the story.I have to agree, too, with other reviewers that most of the characters are unlikable at best. Our narrator - frieda, a follower, who spends much of the novel unravelling at the seams - courts self-destruction by constantly ignoring her conscience, her own good sense and all her previous loyalties for the sake of fitting in with people she detests, all despite apparently knowing better, and is difficult to sympathize with fully. Her friend isabel, despite her significance to the narrative, remains unfortunately shadowy throughout - with what little we do know about her suggesting that she's not actually all that much less shallow and thoughtlessly compliant than the story's designated villains. Almost all the men are misogynistic, sex-obsessed caricatures without a single redeeming feature, and ugly inside and out. Even the romantic lead only really looks good by comparison: I'm certain, however, that this was a deliberate choice to illustrate exactly how dire the futures the girls are facing really are, with even the best-case scenario involving marriage to a man who'd graciously read to them, but would never teach his wife to read. Mean girl megan, by contrast, lights up the page and steals every scene she's in through sheer, unrelenting, passive-aggressive awfulness. Best observed from a safe distance, she's so deliciously detestable she's my favourite character by a county mile. At least this girl knows what she wants.I enjoyed this book. I'm glad I read it. Heck, I'll probably read it again at some point. But it's undoubtedly flawed, and your ability to get on with it will depend to a large extent on how prepared you are to look past that. 3.5 stars.

I picked this book up and before I knew it, I was halfway through. The very next day I stayed up late to finish it. I could not put it down.Set in a dystopian future where the world as we know it is gone (along with all the inessential things like animals and organised religion)and women only exist to look beautiful and serve men. The story focusses on frieda (no capital letters for any of the female characters in the book - they're not important enough) and her best friend isabel, who have grown up together in the cloistered atmosphere of a school (not unlike a convent, with chastity sisters dressed in black and with shaved heads ruling over them). They're in their final year before their ceremony to determine whether they'll become a high-ranking companion, a concubine, or a chastity sister themselves and isabel is falling apart before frieda's eyes.Told entirely from frieda's point of view, the tension sizzles off the page as the bitchiness between the girls steps up in their competitiveness to win the few men there are to become companions.I loved this book - I'm not sure how the author did it - the tension is unbearable in places - but it's a compulsive read. When the main male character was introduced (I won't say "hero" because there is no heroic behaviour from any of the male characters in this novel), I thought, "Oh, here we go, another YA romance with a million sequels to follow whilst frieda escapes the repressive system with muscly Darwin hanging off her arm" - but this couldn't be further from the truth - thank God. There are no sequels here - just an ending with no room for redemption for anyone.The obsessiveness about appearances is a thinly veiled commentary on the shallowness of our own society - the way the girls are with their weight, their looks, their make-up, is all horribly familiar - as is their dependence on "myface" (a social media site) which they use as a tool for bullying, enhancing their power and just to anchor themselves (as frieda says, it's as if she doesn't exist without updating her status all the time). This is a darkly chilling fable for contemporary times - if you've ever obsessed about your own weight/appearance - definitely, definitely read this book.