As a childfree woman who plans on staying childfree, I owe both of these women a huge debt of gratitude. They're the reason birth control went from being illegal in the early 20th century to being free for me in the early 21st. That being said, I HATED this book.

Firstly, I was hoping for and expecting something similar to my recent read of Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait? That book focused primarily on the suffrage movement, with biographical elements of Alice Paul and Woodrow Wilson. This, on the other hand, was a biography of the people who kick-started the birth control movement, and the actual movement itself took a backseat. I stopped caring about Dennett's and Sanger's tiffs. It got old. I cared less about their personal lives, and I stand by that since both were either cheaters or homewreckers.

And don't even get me started at the author's thinly veiled (read: failed attempt at hiding) preference for Margaret Sanger, especially when I wanted to know more about Dennett. Yes, yes, Sanger was important and was the ultimate reason that birth control was passed. She's also the reason that I have to go to my OBGYN once a year to keep up my prescription for birth control even if it's not a pap smear year. Frankly, it's annoying. I'm in good health with no plans of having a child, and there's otherwise no need to go every year. But hey!!! That's the price I pay for my free birth control, and at least I (currently) don't have to fight for my right to have it. But I will say that I absolutely despise Margaret Sanger, and it's not just because she was a raging eugenicist who was definitely racist (although the author will try and sweep it under the rug because Sanger clearly was the superior person in this movement, why would you deign to criticize her), but also because Margaret was a petty jerk who could not drop a grudge. It became grating. And that's not even the fact that she cheated on every husband she ever had and several of her boyfriends. Again, yes, I owe her a debt of gratitude, but she's still somewhat of an asshole, and I don't have to admire assholes. Although, for everyone saying she was the founder of Planned Parenthood and therefore allowed abortions for her eugenics movement: false. Sanger discouraged abortions.

That being said, this book is still important because the topic is still relevant. I could dive real deep into my politics at the moment, but all I'm going to say is that the overturning of Roe v. Wade sets a dangerous precedent for birth control. And before anyone gets in my comments about how it's "an abortion:" no, it's not. Sit tf down. Don't even bring IUDs into this. Birth control prevents abortions, and if that's what you're so focused on preventing, make sure that birth control is still accessible. Even if it goes against your religion. Even if it goes against your political beliefs. Not everyone wants a child either at the present moment or ever, and organizations such as the Heritage Foundation (creator of Project 2025, which gets two big middle fingers from me) support the overall ban of birth control. So does Clarence Thomas, my least favorite SCOTUS justice. So do people I knew in college. So I'm pissed that this fight is not something that has been won forever, and I'm pissed that this book was bad and I still wrote a long review for it because of its ongoing relevance.

Whatever. 2.5/5. I really hated reading it towards the end, but it was on my tbr. I recommend for its importance, not for its enjoyment.

We did it, Joe (aka finishing it before my husband and I went to go watch the movie, and yes, of course, the book was better. Always)

I know it says that it took me over a month to finish it, and from the bottom of my heart: that is my bad. This book is incredible, and all of the people who told me to listen to the audiobook were right. I immediately bought a paperback copy because it's that good. I want to read it again.

And yes, of course, it's science fiction, so realism isn't exactly the goal, but everything about it felt very real. The stakes felt real, the initial global reaction felt real, the "doing what needs to be done" felt real, and everything about Ryland felt real. Andy Weir is a master of science fiction, and I need to read The Martian now.

The ending wasn't my favorite, and Stratt started to bore me towards the end, but this is one of the books that everyone needs to read once in their lives.

I fear booktok ate with this one, actually

I'm not going to give a very long review because it feels like the entire book is spoilers for the entire book, but I will say that it was nothing like what I expected and surpassed all of my hopes and expectations. I INHALED this book

God, every day I’m glad that I decided to stop my academic career at the master’s level, and I’m even more grateful that teaching at the professorial level was never a desire of mine because man, adjuncting sounds like hell. Truly

In this novel, the main character, Sam, is an adjuncting English prof who keeps getting beaten down by life. On her first day at her new adjuncting gig, she runs into the professor with whom she had a…complicated and murky relationship. To make matters worse, he has officially published a new novel, seemingly about their dynamic, and this causes Sam a lot of stress (rightfully so). But she doesn’t have a lot of time to focus on that, what with applying for full-time positions, teaching classes, lesson planning, grading, and trying to scrape through each day. Of course, with the exploitation of adjunct professors, scraping by becomes a bigger and bigger ask as real-life problems arise.

Overall, I enjoyed the prose. I thought the author had a wonderful grasp of how to write, but I ended up becoming bogged down by exactly how much Sam ended up going through. I understand its realism, but in fiction, I want there to be one modicum of hope, of success. Something good to happen, no matter how small it may be. That just wasn’t the case here, and it reached a point where reading it became a chore instead of a pleasure. I want to add that I saw several people criticizing the ending, and honestly? I appreciated it. I think it aligned very well with Sam’s character and her goals.

Secondly, and the most minor critique I have: this felt so pretentious at times. I love books set in academia, I really do — though I may (read: probably) never return to school — but I’m slowly learning, I hate when the academia centers on the English department. Say what you will, call me what you will, but I was also under the head of my alma mater’s English department, and it was by far my least favorite of my two majors (ask anyone I was close to during that time — I repeatedly asked my advisor if I could drop the major). The characters always carry an air of pretentiousness that I haven’t read in any other campus novel, and it’s the very thing I hated about my English major in the first place.

Third, this felt simultaneously too woke and not woke enough. Much of the conflict centers on the MeToo Movement, and like real life, I suppose, the person without power in this situation was most often blamed simply because she was less gregarious. The need for nuance was stressed, but only when these characters wanted to defend their beloved professor and never at any other time. And this doesn’t change with other issues. One character comes from a privileged background but is still an adjunct and suffers from this exploitation; because of her privilege, Sam deems her perspective as less valuable. There were several conversations about the exploitation of contract labor, a very real and a very big problem across a variety of professions, and it’s both heavy-handed and dismissed. These are all real-world reactions, but the amount of times these real-world reactions occurred rubbed me the wrong way.

Finally, I will always have trouble reading books that touch on a subject like this. It’s why The Love Hypothesis will never be my favorite Ali Hazelwood book. But this novel in particular has some similarities to a situation I dealt with in my program, and it became a hard read to navigate. That’s not the author’s fault, and if anything, the author gave me words to phrase what I’ve been thinking for years. Overall, not bad, not great, and I’m not planning to read it again. 3/5