School Library Journal Starred Review (Wed Nov 01 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Gr 9 Up —In this story told in a series of layered flashbacks, Eleanor has graduated as Best Girl from The Meadows and has been working in her chosen role as an adjudicator, in charge of evaluating other graduates' success in society. Eleanor was elated when she first got her letter to attend The Meadows, "a place where the best and brightest of our country can learn to burn even brighter." It provided her with an opportunity to escape her seaside village and her loveless adoptive mother. In the style of Kazuo Ishiguro, details about this elite school are dabbled out in tiny, delicious morsels and flashbacks of kissing a girl from the village help readers to discover the true nature of The Meadows—a heavy-handed attempt at instilling feminine arts and crushing lesbian inclinations through Conversion Therapy. The Matrons at the school and their goals for the residents are reminiscent of Margaret Atwell's The Handmaid's Tale with the ultimate goal of all young women placed in a marital household and producing children. The cast is diverse and issues of race are tackled head-on as readers appreciate the ridiculous color-blinding attempts of the state to eliminate all race by proclamation, "In the eyes of the state, we are all one race." A Black character demonstrates her rebellion by making her newly minted Caucasian, blonde hair long enough to braid. The writing is painterly, yet tight; the book ties up every detail and reaffirms that queer folks are wonderful just as they are and do not require reprogramming. VERDICT A haunting dystopian amalgamation for the 21st century. Superlative, powerful, and timely.—Leah Krippner

ALA Booklist (Mon Nov 06 00:00:00 CST 2023)

Eleanor dreams of getting a letter that will invite her to attend an elite school for the best and smartest girls in the country. When her acceptance to the Meadows finally arrives, she's ecstatic: it's her ticket out of her small village and homelife with a distant, uncaring mother. But when she arrives at the Meadows, not everything at the school is as bright and beautiful as it appears on the surface. Oakes' dystopian book is reminiscent of a YA Handmaid's Tale and toggles seamlessly between past and present. In the past, a young Eleanor slowly unravels the dark secrets underpinning the Meadows. In the present, Eleanor has graduated from the Meadows, and her job is assessing other "reformed" girls before her own inevitable government-mandated marriage t she can't stop thinking about Rose, a girl she loved back at school. This gripping book will appeal to readers who enjoy dystopian books with feminist themes and stories that highlight the power of queer community.

Kirkus Reviews

In a pristine, unchanging meadowland, a select group of young people learn to be perfect wives and mothers in a post–climate-disaster society on the rebuild.Eleanor long dreamed of attending one of the handful of idyllic state-run schools for the best and brightest. When she arrived at the Meadows as a young teen, leaving behind her (maybe more than) best friend, June, she quickly began to suspect that she'd been sent there for reasons other than her academic record. Classes taught ladylike comportment and homemaking rather than science or literature, and students were encouraged to scrub themselves of any impulses that might lead them away from the heteronormative roles "nature intended." Now 18, Eleanor is an adjudicator, responsible for monitoring former classmates. Oakes crafts the book with strong cues from adult speculative fiction classics: Both Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale are evident inspirations. The cast represents a variety of racial, gender, and sexual identities. The timeline hops between past and present, the tension at a constant simmer and a new revelation always around the corner. The book is cogent and incisive in its remarks on our present world: Surveillance culture, reproductive coercion, and anti-queer bigotry are all heightened to their very possible conclusions. Eleanor reads white; June is biracial with a white father and a late mother who had "amber" skin and came from an island that succumbed to climate change.Timely and gripping. (author's note, resources) (Dystopian. 13-18)

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Fourteen-year-old Eleanor Arbuck feels isolated in the seaside town where she lives with her emotionally distant mother, so she’s excited to attend the Meadows, a school for the country’s “best and brightest.” Once there, however, she discovers that her education involves performing toxic, government-enforced gender roles (“The Meadows will teach you to become women, as women are meant to be,” her instructors assert). Four years later, Eleanor is experiencing panic attacks and mourns Rose, the deceased girl she loved at the Meadows, while working a job monitoring “reformed” gay, bisexual, and transgender people living in a civilization that bans queerness. She quietly pushes back by fabricating her reports. Her world soon upends when she learns that Rose might be alive. Oakes (The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly) employs evocative prose and worldbuilding shot through with equal parts melancholy and hope to craft an intelligent dystopian tale that proves a biting interpretation of contemporary issues surrounding conversion therapy, homo-phobia, misogyny, and racism. Includes an author’s note, resources, and a content note referencing an instance of suicide. Eleanor is white; the supporting cast is racially diverse. Ages 14–up. Agent: Jennifer Laughran, Andrea Brown Literary. (Sept.)