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The year is 2050. Ava and her girlfriend live in what's left of Brooklyn, and though they love each other, it's hard to find happiness while the effects of climate change rapidly eclipse their world. Soon, it won't be safe outside at all. The only people guaranteed survival are the ones whose applications are accepted to The Inside Project, a series of weather-safe, city-sized structures around the world. Jacqueline Millender is a reclusive billionaire/women’s rights advocate, and thanks to a generous donation, she’s just become the director of the Inside being built on the bones of Manhattan. Her ideas are unorthodox, yet alluring—she's built a whole brand around rethinking the very concept of empowerment. Shelby, a business major from a working-class family, is drawn to Jacqueline’s promises of power and impact. When she lands her dream job as Jacqueline’s personal assistant, she's instantly swept up into the glamourous world of corporatized feminism. Also drawn into Jacqueline's orbit is Olympia, who is finishing up medical school when Jacqueline recruits her to run the health department Inside. The more Olympia learns about the project, though, the more she realizes there's something much larger at play. As Ava, Olympia, and Shelby start to notice the cracks in Jacqueline's system, Jacqueline tightens her grip, becoming increasingly unhinged and dangerous in what she is willing to do—and who she is willing to sacrifice—to keep her dream alive. At once a mesmerizing story of queer love, betrayal, and chosen family, and an unflinching indictment of cis, corporate feminism, Yours for the Taking holds a mirror to our own world, in all its beauty and horror.
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I can see that the author had a message she wanted to convey. I just wish she would've done it with better plot. Most of this was build up on concidences, love and a non-existence of a goverment or regulatory system.
The fact that this kind of projects could be entirely run by civilians is more of a fantasy plot point than a sci-fi one.
If climate change eradicated goverments... okay cool I guess? But by the end of the book, there's mention of some entity that might intervene now that things have happened, so... there is something, what tho? We don't know. Also, where the fuck was the military? Only in dialogues mentioning that they exists... but not a single mention of anything useful they´ve done.
We have a megalomanic civilian lady and no other power structure to compare her to?
So in the end, this book is not plot driven but character driven, am I right? uh, kinda but not really. For me, to be a character driven book your characters need to be properly fleshed out and have a distinctive evolution curve. Here, some characters remain stagnant through the entire book, others, like Shelby only react to things. I feel sorry for her, Jaqueline treated her like a token and this book did the same. Take her out of the book and things would've been the same, she contributed nothing to the overarching scheme of things.
I came into this book with low expectations because I had read some reviews before but the last time I selected a random audiobook from libby it worked out fine since I really enjoyed it, this time I cannot say I didn't enjoy reading it but I was constantly rolling my eyes at this characters and their childish naivete.