Review: The Meadows by Stephanie Oakes
From the publisher:
A queer, YA Handmaid's Tale meets Never Let Me Go about a dystopian society bent on relentless conformity, and the struggle of one girl to save herself and those she loves from a life of lies
Everyone hopes for a letter—to attend the Estuary, the Glades, the Meadows. These are the special places where only the best and brightest go to burn even brighter.
When Eleanor is accepted at the Meadows, it means escape from her hardscrabble life by the sea, in a country ravaged by climate disaster. But despite its luminous facilities, endless fields, and pretty things, the Meadows keeps dark secrets: its purpose is to reform students, to condition them against their attractions, to show them that one way of life is the only way to survive. And maybe Eleanor would believe them, except then she meets Rose.
Four years later, Eleanor and her friends seem free of the Meadows, changed but not as they’d hoped. Eleanor is an adjudicator, her job to ensure her former classmates don’t stray from the lives they’ve been trained to live. But Eleanor can’t escape her past . . . or thoughts of the girl she once loved. As secrets unfurl, Eleanor must wage a dangerous battle for her own identity and the truth of what happened to the girl she lost, knowing, if she’s not careful, Rose’s fate could be her own.
My review:
Thank you to BookishFirst and PenguinTeen for the ARC.
The Meadows was hard to read--it was very well written, but it truly felt like where the world is headed now and I had to take breaks while reading to remind myself we're not there yet.
The story follows Eleanor remembering her time at The Meadows, a facility for the brightest and the best girls to learn how to be the most productive members of the new society they can be. It is interspersed with what is going on in the present after Eleanor has left the facility and trying to solve the mystery of what happened to her friend Rose when they were children.
The story is on the slow side of moderately paced but does a very good job of leaving clue crumbs to leave you wanting to know what is going on. On the flip side, I did find it a bit predictable. I called everything that happened and was annoyed with Eleanor for not figuring it out. The ending also felt a bit rushed and didn't seem as fleshed out as the rest of the story.
All in all, I really enjoyed it and will definitely be recommending it!
4.5 / 5 stars
The Meadows by Stephanie Oakes releases September 12, 2023