Only Ever Yours by Louise O'Neill

Synopsis

In a world in which baby girls are no longer born naturally, women are bred in schools, trained in the arts of pleasing men until they are ready for the outside world. At graduation, the most highly rated girls become “companions”, permitted to live with their husbands and breed sons until they are no longer useful.

For the girls left behind, the future – as a concubine or a teacher – is grim.

Best friends Freida and Isabel are sure they’ll be chosen as companions – they are among the most highly rated girls in their year.

But as the intensity of final year takes hold, Isabel does the unthinkable and starts to put on weight...
And then, into this sealed female environment, the boys arrive, eager to choose a bride.

Freida must fight for her future – even if it means betraying the only friend, the only love, she has ever known...

Review
I've been dying to read this for ages, and finally bit the bullet last week. I love dystopians (and am always welcoming recommendations if any of you have ready any good ones) and the concept fascinated me when I read the synopsis.

This is definitely the creepiest book I have read! It is based on beauty ideals, where women, or the eves, are trained daily to become the picture of perfection. For instance, they have a target weight and if they stray they are given kcal buster drugs or, if underweight a program to make them gain weight. Add this to the ranking system, where the eves in each year are ranked, which changes dependent on the perceived beauty of each eve. This breeds a culture of utter bitchiness. All the friendships are so false, and you can hear the fake concern when they're 'worried' about the others make up, or the fake compliments. The person that compared this book to the film 'Mean Girls' was spot on. You can imagine 'The Plastics' fitting right in.

The lead character Freida last year was #3 the previous year, but has recently unable to sleep much, therefore is developing bags under her eys, and in the final year of school before the choosing ceremony begins starts off as #5 and slowly slips down the ranks. She is increasingly stressed with her friendship to Isobel, and trying to keep in with the 'in' crowd. 

The way she acts, sometimes it is hard to tell whether she is only doing it to keep in with the popular eves, or if she is so ingrained in the culture that she is also that way. In the last half or so of this book, I am more convinced on the side she is just trying to fit in so she does well in the rankings and doesn't fall on the bad side of Megan (#1 rank and basically Regina George on steroids). 

She does one thing that just seemed so idiotic and I was screaming in my head at her actions, I completely understand why she did this, but oh my god really?!

This book brings a lot of questions, not just on beauty ideals and the parallels in todays society, but questions about the universe themselves, how human-like are the eves made to be? They seem incredibly human like in most aspects, but if they were human, I think there would be more variety in the personalities. Presumably they have been genetically modified to be this way, which then brings in a whole load of other questions. 

The ending has a good shock, and the last few pages had me pretty much silenced for ages, as I digested what happened. I had heard this book was good, and am ashamed I didn't pick it up earlier. Creepy, thought-provoking and utterly enthralling. 

Order on Amazon now!

Published by: Quercus