Only Ever Yours by Louise O'neill

Warning: Spoilers! (duh.)

In a world in which baby girls are no longer born naturally, women are bred in schools, trained in the arts of pleasing men until they are ready for the outside world. At graduation, the most highly rated girls become “companions”, permitted to live with their husbands and breed sons until they are no longer useful.

For the girls left behind, the future – as a concubine or a teacher – is grim.

Best friends Freida and Isabel are sure they’ll be chosen as companions – they are among the most highly rated girls in their year.

But as the intensity of final year takes hold, Isabel does the unthinkable and starts to put on weight. ..
And then, into this sealed female environment, the boys arrive, eager to choose a bride.

Freida must fight for her future – even if it means betraying the only friend, the only love, she has ever known. . . 

If you are looking for a happy ending, this isn't the book for you. I've put off this review for a while because this is not a regular book, there is a plot but there isn't a plot in the traditional sense. Instead this book is more led and directed by it's ideas. It has a heavy feminist slant with aggressive ideologies about beauty and the way society expects women to look and act. This was more what the novel was about rather than Freida and Isabel themselves. Frieda was more of a vehicle, she was used like a puppet to suggest O'Neill's thoughts. 

We follow Freida in this dystopian world in which all women are genetically engineered and grow up in academies, training them to please men. They go through rigorous stages and tasks in order to decide whether they will be Companions, Concubines or Sisters. Basically Wives, Whores or Teachers. Despite being promised a story of friendship between Freida and Isabel, turns out there friendship dies out before the novel begins. 

Honestly I can't decide whether I liked this book. It was tedious at times and preachy but it was excellently written and full of big ideas. It felt more like a book you would analyse for a literature class, 't you aren't going to enjoy it too much, but you can appreciate the effort and intelligence behind every word. 

Happy Reading