Book Review: Athena’s Choice

Disclosure: This book was given to me by the author in exchange for my honest review.

I want to start off by being honest, this is the first review I am posting on my blog with a less than favorable review. I decided to rate this book 3/5 stars for quite a few reasons and while I had incredibly high hopes for the book, it fell flat for me. Let me tell you a little about this book before I jump into my review of Athena’s Choice.

Summary

Athena Vosh lives just like any other teenager from the year 2099. She watches reality shows with her friends, eats well, and occasionally wonders to herself: what would life be like if men were still alive?

It has been almost 50 years since an experimental virus accidentally killed all the men on earth. However, a controversial project is currently underway to bring men back. There’s just one catch. The project has been sabotaged.

So begins the award-winning novel, Athena’s Choice. When the police of 2099 are tasked with finding the saboteur, they receive a mysterious command to investigate the otherwise innocuous Athena Vosh. After it becomes clear that the young girl might know more than she lets on, Athena is brought in to participate in the official investigation. Simultaneously, the girl begins to experience a series of cryptic dreams featuring a ruined library and an old book containing the saboteur’s true identity. As the police close in on their prize, Athena finds herself on a journey of her own. Her clue-filled dreams and incorruptible spirit bring her face-to-face with a pair of forgotten truths about happiness and gender. The world waits to see if men will return as Athena fights a separate battle, culminating in the choice that will define her and others’ lives forever.

Athena’s Choice by Adam Boostrom on Goodreads

My Review

I think the idea of this book was incredibly interesting. I always like books that ask the question “what would life be like if this thing didn’t exist”. You can plug ‘thing’ with pretty much anything, if we didn’t have electricity, you get the TV show Revolution. In this book, that ‘thing’ was men. So, what would a world be without men? Well, according to Adam Boostrom, pretty great. There’s no war, no homelessness, everyone who doesn’t have a job gets citizens benefits… While I don’t necessarily have a problem with this line of thinking, I do think it’s interesting.

My main problem is that in between every chapter, there is an article that completely pulls you out of the moment. It basically gives you a definition of an event which I think is implied through the story itself. I don’t think these articles and advertisements really add anything to the story. I think to get more enjoyment out of the book itself, readers should skip these. In the end, I started skipping them so that the book as a whole was more enjoyable.

I also wish that these characters were more developed. Truthfully, I don’t feel like I know anything about Athena. Her relationship with Nomi is never stated, so, are they friends? Are they dating? Are they slightly more than friends? It’s never explicitly said or conveyed what Athena’s emotions towards Nomi are, which feels strange to me.

Also, there were a lot of cliches which made many things very predictable to me. I am usually someone who predicts endings while watching a movie and reading a book, and I have a hard time enjoying something that proves me right. I like to be surprised by endings or not be able to predict exactly what’s going to happen and I wasn’t able to do that.

I will say, though, that the writing of this book is really good. It’s super easy to read. Plus, it won’t take you a long time to get through. But, I think that skipping the articles in between chapters will provide you with more enjoyment of the book. This is not a bad book, and the things that I didn’t like about it are relatively small things in the grand scheme. Also, it might not even bother you while reading like it did me. But, I highly suggest checking out the other reviews on Goodreads to see if this is a book you might enjoy.

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This is my Review of the Month for the review collection on LovelyAudiobooks.info