Massive trigger warnings for: child abuse, pedophilia, sexual abuse, assault, animal abuse. This book was real fucked up. Maybe the most fucked up. I have mixed feelings. Surprisingly mostly not because this book is so fucked up, but rather because I feel like it didn’t follow through and stick the landing. I feel a bit cheated by the ending, like it was an easy out. Not quite “it was all a dream” but close. If you’re going to start out with such a powerfully fucked up society and premise, you best have a satisfying ending or people are going to be disappointed. And by people, I mean me. I’m disappointed.
Gather the Daughters takes place in a dystopic wasteland of a world. “The ancestors” sought out a place to live and settled the island that this society currently lives on. A few things about this society:
- They worship their ancestors
- Each family is limited to 2 kiddos
- An extremely high percentage of the babies are genetically deformed due to island inbreeding
- Young people go through a summer of fruition which is mostly a bunch of teenagers hanging in a group, forced to get jiggy with each other. After that, you’re married off and officially adults.
- Once your kids start having children and you’re no longer useful to society, you’re encouraged to drink “the draft” which is basically just liquid death
- As either some creepy social norm or maybe a form of fucked up birth control, men have sex with their prepubescent daughters on the reg and this is just accepted?
Due to a series of unfortunate events, the girls of the town start to get ideas about changing society and opting out of their prescribed futures. This is where the story starts to get interesting. I am SO here for girls taking back the power and fucking shit up. I won’t giveaway what happens, but suffice it to say that I wasn’t satisfied in the least and I don’t know if I can actually recommend that people read this book.
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