Book Review: The Gender Game, by Bella Forrest

Title: The Gender Game
Author: Bella Forrest
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Date of Publication: September 24th, 2016
Format: .doc file
Page Count: 640
Goodreads: Click
Amazon: Associates Link
Recommended? HECK YES!
Similar Books: Bait, by Courtney Farrell, Divergent by Veronica Roth, Matched by Aly Condie, The Giver by Lois Lowry
My Rating: ★★★★★

Holy crow. 

I can't even right now. I can't. even.

I'm flailing like a schoolgirl. Like a fangirl. 

I lost sleep over this book. When I wasn't reading it, I thought about it. I was rooting for Violet. I wanted to read when I couldn't get to my Kindle. This book kept me going, thirsting for more. Thank you Bella Forrest!

If you're following me, you know that I'm a slow reader. A very slow reader. Books take me a week, sometimes more, to finish. Even books that are 200-some pages long. This book is 640 pages long and I finished it in four days. I opened up my Kindle and it told me that it would take me seven hours to complete this novel. After what seemed like minutes, I glanced down and found I had an hour and twenty minutes left of reading time. 

And boy, I wanted more than that!

So let me get on with the review here. I want to start giving my readers a summary of the novel, but that's going to come at the end of the review, since what you're really here to read are my opinions of this book.

I loved it!

But I want to be fair and honest, because that's the best purpose of a review, and it's what helps everybody the most -- including the author, the publisher, and most of all, the reader. My job here is primarily to make sure that you know what you're about to read, as a reader, right?

So here goes. You know I loved the book, so let me talk to you about the things that I didn't like, the things that this book had to make up for to reach the five-star rating that I've given it.

I hate the concept. I'd wanted to love it, because in the past I've been a fairly genderist person myself (something I'm ashamed of, to be honest with you) but the truth is that I wasn't thrilled with the fact that this novel uses gender in such a binary way. I want to say that this would have been more appealing if the title had been different, but I'm not sure that's the case, either. 

But it made up for that, in spades! Much like Divergent separates people into different factions, the world of Matrus and Patrus delineate people based on their gender, and all people are meant to fall into line in a binary way. Some readers are upset by the binary nature of the novel and the assumptions that are made by the people of this world (and therefore presumably by the author) but it appears to me having concluded this book, that the author is attempting to do something revolutionary in terms of expressing that not everyone fits into a binary mold. 

We can hope, right?

I feel strongly that Ms. Forrest took some of the best of the well-known and much-beloved dystopian novels most of us have read and wound them into an exciting novel. There are certainly shades of The Giver, along with elements from Divergent, and even Matched. If you enjoyed these books, I believe that you will enjoy The Gender Game as well. Surely if you enjoyed The Gender Game, you need to read these better-known and mass-published books, because you will get a great deal out of them.

The heroine of this novel, Violet, is a strong and spirited young Matrian girl who committed crimes for which she had been thrust into detention in Matrus, commissioned by the Court to embark on a mission in Patrus to retrieve a silver egg which had been stolen from Matrus. She must complete her task without detection and without Patrus suspecting Matrus of the crime, which would result in a war between the two nations. She's a strong lead with a lot of spirit, but without the boring "girl power" that one might expect from a book in which people are divided by their gender. Her romantic interest grows throughout the novel, and their relationship is not a sudden surprise to the reader.

It is abundantly clear that Ms. Forrest loves the characters about whom she's writing -- I found it difficult not to love them too, and none of them bored me (which worried me in the beginning). 

She launches straight into the story, which is narrated in first person (and this is a reason that the novel reminds me of the lesser-known Bait [do yourself and Ms. Farrell a favor and read this one if you enjoyed The Gender Game]) without giving excessive background details to bore the reader. The only thing that I was really left wondering is what had led the society to be the way that it is. Of course this is the first book in a series and no doubt Ms. Forrest will reveal this information in her own time and in her own way -- I look forward to finding out!

As with most Dystopian novels, however, I am left with the question of "Where is the rest of the world?" Assuming that this is set on Earth (and we're not told otherwise), these are small countries and the book is written in a very North American tone, so I'd love to know where the rest of the world has gone that these two nations appear to be all that is known to our heroine (Violet).

I am very excited to see what comes next in this series, and I've signed up for updates to review an ARC of the next book in the series (put a hardcopy in my hands if possible please, Ms. Forrest!).

Loved, loved, loved this book!

Disclosure: I received a copy of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.