Completely timely and brilliant. Also disturbing and saddening. I can't decide how I feel about the ending but it just means there's more to talk about. Highly recommended.

I really love dystopian fiction, but its a genre I don't read enough of so I really enjoyed this novel. It's very dark and disturbing. The fact that the characters are all young worried me a little, but I needn't have. It was a thoroughly enjoyable book and one I recommend.

I can't really go into too much detail without giving spoilers, so I'll just say, put any preconceptions about what this novel is to one side and give this book a read - you won't regret it!

I was so interested in this one because it's ultimately about a cult. A cult who live on an island where very strict rules are put in place. Daughters are used to "comfort" their Father's during the night until their first bleed, then they get married off, Mothers are used for producing two children and housework. Sons help their Fathers in their jobs and Fathers rule the land.

On the island they have a Bible / religious text equivalent called Our Book and within the book there are the "Shalt Not's", for example "Thou shalt not disobey thy father", or "Thou shalt not touch a daughter who has bled until she enters her summer of fruition". Living on the island is simple if you don't question or break the rules.

For a woman to have a decent life on the island, there's only one piece of advice: have son's.

If you can't already see what I'm getting at from my short description above, then let me put this simply. This is dark. Gather the Daughters is a very ominous, disturbed and often times uncomfortable read.

Melamed's writing is stunning. The island she has created comes alive in your mind so easily with every description of the trees, the houses, the beach. The shadiness of the men, the melancholy of the woman, and the fear of the daughters is strongly put across and you can feel the tension of what is looming get heavier and heavier with every turn of the page.

I loved the use of the four different characters to tell a story. To begin with, it is a little confusing - who is who? But you get used to it very quickly! Each of the girls we follow are so well developed, we climb inside their shoes and exist as they do for the length of their chapter. Personally, Rosie was my favourite character of them all, and she wasn't even one of the main ones! That just goes to show how well structured every single girl was in this book, when you feel you can love a side character over a main one.

I guess this book only gets a 4 stars because it wasn't entirely what I was expecting... and sometimes that's a good thing your expectations are exceeded, but that wasn't the case for this one. It was a lot slower moving than I would have liked, there were panicky, heart racing moments, but not a lot of them, and I wasn't really satisfied with how everything ended. I don't want to say too much because of spoilers, but yes, not what I was hoping for.

Would I class this as sci-fi? No. As horror? No. As a thriller? No. For me, this felt more like a general fiction novel with some more disturbing aspects than many of the others in the genre have.

Overall, though, this is worth picking up to read. It's definitely uncomfortable to read at times and I did feel a little bit squirmish at what is implied throughout, but it's such a gorgeously written book and there are exciting moments throughout. As this is Melamed's first book, I can see her going big places with more fiction in the future!

P.S. If you don't feel comfortable reading books about incest / child sexual abuse please don't read this and then rate it 1 star because you found the subject matter difficult to read. That's just not fair.

Gather the Daughters was exactly the twisted, dark sort of thriller that I usually enjoy. As the mysteries and traditions of those who live on the island which this book is set on unfold throughout the plot, you begin to see more and more how deep and dark what goes on behind closed door's of the island's inhabitants are - and the way the goings on are kept secret in a way, despite everyone knowing that 'everybody does it'.

The plot of the book essentially revolves around a group of girls living on the island, and their struggles as they grow closer to the 'summer of fruition' - essentially, when they become women after getting their first period, and are therefore made to spend a summer with a group of older men until they choose a husband. The lifespan of the island's inhabitants then tends to be just for a couple of decades, with most girls having grandchildren by their late twenties, and all adults taking a final draft when they are seen as no longer being useful to the island.

The chauvinistic lifestyle of the island and the way that the girls are expected to meekly comply with tradition, despite it ultimately causing them pain and suffering, is very reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and very poignant in our current period of history. Although I found the multiple points of view made it slightly harder to connect with the characters, I did appreciate the different girls opinions on their lives - Janey's outright rebellion and refusal to become a woman instilling fear into the religious leaders of the island; Vanessa's determination to please her father, whilst at the same time being scared when she sees her body changing and knowing that for her, womanhood is something ultimate and final that's to be feared; Amanda's realisation that for her, at least, there is only one way out for her and her future child after she let herself grow into womanhood, and Caitlin's unconventional parentage and childhood on the wastelands.

As I say above, my only criticism is that I found it hard to connect with any of the characters due to the multiple switching points of view, and also possibly due to each POV being written in third person. Although I felt that the ending fit with the rest of the book, in terms of the air of mystery being upheld, I would have liked to know what happens next. I'd definitely recommend this book and would absolutely love to read a sequel.

Gather The Daughters has garnered inevitable comparisons to The Handmaid's Tale, however it's a very different prospect to Atwood's classic. Set in a dystopian future, on an island colonised by 10 men who established a nightmarish cult of extreme patriarchy, where women and girls are entirely subservient to men, to horrifying extents (as becomes slowly clear over the course of the novel). The island provides a claustrophobic and sinister setting, from where there is no prospect of escape. Only the wanderers - a group of elite men - are allowed to leave and venture into the 'Wasteland' of the mainland. This is a bleak read, in which there is barely a glimpse of joy for any character. It's easy to forget that our protagonists are young, pre-pubescent girls, subject as they are to such unremitting horror. Gather The Daughters makes for compelling reading, but it's not a book to relax with.

This is a tricky book to score and review. I found it a compelling but disturbing read. Did I like it? Ought I have liked it? I'm not quite sure!

It's about a cult in some sort of post-apocalyptic world. The cult lives on an island that cannot support huge numbers of people. As a result, their society has strict rules about the number of children they have, when older people must take the 'final draught' to die and so on.

When summer arrives, young women who've had their first period over winter seek to find a match. Children, male and female, are allowed to run amok away from the adults who are usually so strict.

There's a dark side to all of this, of course. You slowly figure out what one way they control the population size is by enabling fathers to sleep with their daughters until their first blood. Yep, the majority of female characters in this book are regularly raped.

Some of the young girls will do anything not to get their period, unwilling to go to the next step of their lives and become wives. Even if it means starving themselves.

Some become terrified that if they have children, those children will have the same fate as themselves.

Some start a rebellion....

So this is easy to read and keeps you turning the pages but the book is not without its problems. The girls' rebellion could be powerful but goes nowhere, ending because of an illness that is totally out of their control. They have no agency, which is part of the plot, but frustrating to read.

The author has worked with abuse victims, legitimising how she handles the topic, which is sensitively done (nothing is graphic).

But it is still deeply unpleasant of course, I couldn't help wonder - sure, I could imagine an initial cult with men who were willing to rape their daughters, but that most of the next generation would also willingly do it? No, I couldn't or didn't want to buy that.

It's a good read. But a hard one, too.

Wow, what can I say? 'Gather the Daughters' is a fantastic dystopian novel that has quite simply blown me away! It drew me in from the very first page and didn't let go until the final page had been turned. This was my first Jennie Melamed novel, but it definitely won't be my last. A remarkable 5 stars. Highly recommended.

I received this ebook free from NetGalley and Tinder Press.

Gather the Daughters is a gripping read about life on a dystopian island, where a small community scrapes by, having escaped the wastelands and war and burning. The first generation settlers are worshipped and their rules still hold: a long list of 'shalt-nots' that make it clear that this is a patriarchy; that women and girls have no agency over their lives. It is a society where the birth of a boy is celebrated but a girl is wept over.

Jennie Melamed shows us a community where life is harsh for everyone - summers humming with mosquitoes, the smell of human excrement as fertiliser polluting the air, where couples must drink 'the final draft' once the husband's usefulness is deemed over, usually by the age of forty - but this way of life is worst of all for women and girls.

We see chiefly through the eyes of the girl narrators: Janey Solomon who does not eat in a bid to stave off becoming a woman; Vanessa Adam who loves books and questions but shies away for a long time from the questions that need to be asked; Caitlin Jacob, permanently bruised and shrinking; and Amanda Balthazar who has been through the rite of passage called the summer of fruition with its resulting marriage and pregnancy. Through them we get a full, subtly-drawn picture of island life. We grow to understand fully the ways in which women and girls have to submit in this society, and the lack of choice they have over everything other than their wild, free summers as girls.

This book does not grip through twists or surprises, it is a book that draws you on instead with its cumulative building up of its story. And while the island remains unnamed, I found that I was thinking of it as Pitcairn Island. Reading this novel, I felt sad, sick and angry - this unsettling work is important, and reminds us of the importance of questioning our traditions and culture where they prop up inequalities of power.

An essential read.

Well that was a disturbing read. Gather the Daughters is told from the point of view of several girls living on an island in what can only be described as a cult. The girls believe something happened in the wastelands in the past which means they must stay on their island, living their life the way the ancestors wanted. There is a lot that is not explicit in Jennie's writing but it's clear early on that the girls are being lied to.

In some ways, their rules are logical to preserve a community on an isolated island, but others will just leave you thinking that the ancestors must have left the wastelands to create a place where paedophiles could thrive. The psychological power of cults and domestic abuse is the only thing stopping the disbelief that the mothers would allow it. The women are all victims, they fear having daughters because they know what will happen.

Girls are married off the summer after their first period, when they are suitable for breeding. They have a summer of fruition by the end of which they will be married off, some already pregnant. The younger children are cast out during this time, living wild on the island for the summer. When a couple's daughters are married off and have their own children, they can only live for as long as the husband can work. When they are no longer of use, both take the final draft, solving the problem that would be caused by an aging population without healthcare.

The island is showing the signs of a decreasing gene pool, with more and more "defectives" born. The girls are told they can't choose a husband with the same second name, obviously because of the consequences of in-breeding. More insidious is the shalt not that forbids touching of girls after they have started bleeding and before their summer of fruition, implying that prepubescent girls are being sexually abused. The shalt not is there to prevent babies born out of incest.

The girls don't know any better and it's heartbreaking and difficult reading. They are the property of their fathers and must do whatever they want. They love their fathers, they want to be good daughters. Couples are only allowed two children and there's no birth control, so after the second it is assumed that the men must find their pleasures elsewhere so not to break the rules. It's sickening. Note, if you're going to start an island community, make sure to take men that can control themselves.

Some people question the ways, even small things like asking for the girls to be older before marriage, or their husbands to be the same age. But these people seem to conveniently die of illness or mishap. Janey, one of the girls the story follows, is starving herself to stop her period from starting. Another girl, Amanda, is pregnant with her first child. When she finds out it's going to be a girl she starts to think it would be better to take their chances in the wastelands.

I think the idea is well executed but I can't really say I enjoyed this book. The undertones of sexual abuse were a bit too much and there wasn't an abundance of hope for the girls. At the least, it will make you appreciate being a woman in the here and now.

I write this as I have just finished this novel, I am emotional and a little bit wounded. The author managed to invoke so many emotions in the journey of this novel, that I am almost lost for words!
I will confess off the bat, I am a woman who delivered my first baby at 19 years old. That same baby is now 14 years old! That, made this intense reading!

My final notes on this novel read:
uncomfortable, yet compelling reading &
A million shivers down my spine
This is without a doubt an intense novel, be under no illusions………

The novel opens on a seemingly colonised Island, where the mainland is referred to as the ‘wasteland’. The wasteland is destroyed by war, disease and murder. A new society exists on the Island, a society that has a whole new meaning for the female of the species……..

I do by no means want to spoil this novel in any way shape or form. I often like to include quotes and outtakes from the novel itself. However, you won’t find any here. This is a novel that demands to be read and then devoured and for that reason. I shall not be giving too much away at all.

There are a variety of personalities that inhabit the island. In particular, my favourites some of the young teenage girls. Growing more aware and rebellious with every growing day, throughout the novel. Raised in a society that rejects any form of female empowerment, where women have one use and one use only. This novel often makes for harsh and vile sexist reading. But that is the entire point of the novel, it draws you into the world the teenage girls must endure and it is not easy reading!

The society is effectively a cult, one that has its own set of rules and laws, laid out via the church. A society where, when a young woman meets her summer of fruition, her life will ultimately change, whether she likes it or not! The society must remain with patriarchal order in the home which transpires as women must be controlled and dominated, at all costs.

There are some very neatly written characters and at one point in the novel, I was so moved by a character’s situation, I actually Tweeted the author to tell her so. With the caption ‘what have you done’ ‘heart ripped out’!

In a society so domineering and controlling that the young women wish death before birthing, how will they survive their summer of fruition? The tension drips off every single page! Fear is a powerful commodity and this novel fully details that. The how’s/when’s/whys.

When one of the young teens, witnesses something she shouldn’t and she begins to educate the other girls. The dynamic of their lives changes and it is exceptional reading! Highly recommend 4.5*

Thank you to the publishers Headline and net galley for the arc of this book in return for an honest review.

A dystopian book in the vein of "The Handmaid's Tale" or "Only Ever Yours" this book had me gripped. Told from the viewpoint of the young girls on the island who are on the brink of their "summer of fruition" the story has such a menacing undertone. As I turned the pages I became more and more unsettled, but there is nothing concrete or explicit that created this feeling in me, this book is so much more nuanced and subtle. Snatches of conversations between Vanessa and a newcomer to the island reveal the lies that the society has been built on and the horrors of what it means to be a female on this island.

Despite Vanessa's position of knowing more than the other girls, she does not rebel. She does not seem fearful, rather completely indoctrinated into the society's beliefs. For me the most chilling sentence in the book is:

"who is my little wife?" asks Father in a sweet tone.

Instead, it is the other girls that raise up against the patriarchal society that rules every aspect of their lives. They are lead by Janey, who uses her body as a weapon against the wills of society in the only way that she knows how.

The fathers expect obedience and comfort and the society leaders enforce this. The girls rebellion threatens all that they have created and when a sickness coincides with this rebellion, the leaders use it to their advantage. The preacher delivers a rousing speech to regather their flock:

"As I look upon us, I can see the reasons for their displeasure. We have strayed from their vision and their holiness.We clot up the minds of our daughters with useless knowledge, instead of taking the precious time to teach them to be a solace to their fathers. wives have forgotten how to be a support to their husbands. We have left our aged live too long, past their prime years, for the simple reason that our hearts are soft. Men are swayed by the words of women, by the words of wives and daughters who refuse to submit to their will as wives and daughters should."

The book is cruel and heartbreaking and full of menace, and one that will stay with me for a long time. I would urge anyone to read it and I eagerly await Jennie Melamed's next book.

In a dystopian future is an island where generations have created a basic society for themselves. The men are all powerful and the women submissive. The men work manually and the women have the job of having two healthy children. It is not a welcoming climate where the winter is very cold and the summer air so filled with mosquitos people can barely leave their homes.

This book follows the story of four young girls. Caitlin who tries to hide the shame of the reappearing bruises, Janey who is starving herself to put off the inevitable signs of womanhood, Vanessa who believes in the world that she lives in and Amanda who has just become a woman and had gone through her summer of fruition.

On the surface the world in which these girls live is tough with marriage and babies happening far too young. The older people are encouraged to drink a final draft to make way in the world for new babies. However, beneath the surface there is far worse going on. Has the world ended as the children are taught? What secrets do the daughters all hide? Is the rest of the world as desolate as the Wanderers would have the people believe?

I very much enjoyed this story. In many ways the story is not new and I could see elements of other well known books within this one. However, there are a few twists which help to make this book stand on its own feet. I did have a few concerns as to how this island world continued to survive for so long in isolation, some of which were answered as the book progressed but not all.

I liked the idea of having the chapters telling the story from the four individual girls points of view. I would have liked the girl's personalities to be more clearly defined and individual. The characterisation did need an extra depth to it as some of the characters were slightly two dimensional.

There is more to this book than appears on the surface. I don't want to give out any spoilers but suffice to say that there is topic that underlies this book which is good to raise. I appreciate the author bringing it to the reader's attention.

I found this book an easy read as it flowed well. I was certainly interested in the world that the author had created. I appreciated that she didn't spoon feed us the details of the society she had created but allowed the reader to grow in understanding as the book developed. It is just a shame that the characters weren't a little more developed.

I received a free copy of this book via Netgalley.

Tinder Press is really becoming a must-watch publisher, with fantastic titles like Gather the Daughters popping up all over the place. My first response after reading this book was just ‘whoa’, and even after a little while to digest, it’s still difficult to articulate my thoughts on it.

Any book that starts out with an isolated cult is automatically bound to interest, but as the book unfolds and we learn more and more about this cult, the more sickening and distasteful it becomes. In the folklore passed down through the families, the country was burned to the ground, and ten families escaped to an island, living in a traditional way, and writing their own holy book governing how they live. At the first sign of bleeding, daughters are married, and are grandmothers by the time they are in their late twenties, expected to take their final draft when they are no longer useful.

What is not immediately clear, but that unfolds as you read without an explicit explanation, is that daughters are expected to ‘lie under their fathers’ until they marry, and then ‘lie under their husbands’.

The families all practice different skills and professions, with some being ‘wanderers’ who are allowed to travel back to the wastelands to trade, or bring in new families when they are needed to better the society, and it quickly becomes clear that they are not telling the rest of the families the truth.

The outlook for the daughters is bleak, until one autumn, Janey Soloman, a girl who refuses to grow up and marry, leads a group of girls to live on the beach. As each girl thinks more about what her lot in life is, and what it will go on to be, more and more join, discontent with being used as breeders and having no future to look forward to, but in a society controlled by the fathers, can the daughters ever hope to change anything?

The world in this book is so beautifully written, with the claustrophobic society reflected in the mean wooden house and endless mud of autumn. There is also a real sense of frustration – the only way to leave the island is by the ferry, manned by the ferryman, but no girls are permitted to go there – even if the girls can swim, where will they go? How can they ever change their lives?

Janey is a remarkable character, having the courage to try and write her own story while her entire society brands her as mad, leading the girls to go against their tradition while being unsure of herself as a leader. Vanessa is also an intriguing character, having the spark to have her own ideas, but still just a little too unsure to disobey her father.

This book is dark, and chilling, but it reveals the intricacies of the community at such a perfect pace, never explicitly saying ‘this is what’s going on’, but giving enough signposts for you to cotton on. It’s similar in many ways to The Handmaid’s Tale, but it is informed by real, clinical knowledge of psychology which makes each girl all the more real.

Wow!!! where to start with Gather the Daughters by Jennie Melamed.
This book was completely unlike anything I have ever read. What drew me here initially was the depiction outlined initially in the storyline. the idea of a secret dystopian island, a cult really fired my imagination and I so desperately wanted to know more about this shrouded undisclosed society.
To summarise, we have an island where the ancestors are gods and the wanderers keep order adding to the list of commandments forced on the island's inhabitants.But in reality, it's the men that rule mainly the self-important wanderers who seem to be the only ones completely aware of the whole truth that exists here.
In this very different civilisation, There are some very strange custom's, the children run free naked and covered in mud all summer, it has almost a lord of the flies feel about their summer activities.
As soon as a girl bleeds then she is a woman a child no longer and expected to marry. so here we are talking girls as young as twelve, thirteen marrying older boys of seventeen eighteen.
There is also a very dark undertone beneath island life, fathers are taught to love their daughters literally, this incest is not described graphically it is only referred to in passing, it's a fact of general everyday life almost like brushing your teeth or combing your hair just normal, so common place,, the rule rather than the exception.
This strangely addicting tale is told through the eyes of several of the young girls who call this
abnormal existence home.
What happens when the sheep who blindly follow their masters question their very existence.
What lies beneath this facade of normality.
When the children start rebelling, it sets off a spiral off events that show the rot under the floorboards.
This was an amazingly interesting read that I really enjoyed. It's one of those books that you can really sink your teeth into and makes you think more about what we are told versus what we really should ask and should we blindly follow the rules or query the regime we are born in to.
I received a free E-Copy of Gather The Daughters from NetGalley and this is my own honest opinion.

I'm sorry, I clicked on the link in an email forgetting it would add the book to my shelf. Having found out more about the book, I'm not sure it's for me so I won't be downloading. Apologies.

This book had me captivated from the start. It is different from anything that I have read before and I will remember it for a long time. The way the cult lives and the rules in their lives are described in detail. There is a lot of fear and mistrust. It is a compelling read that is gory and gruesome but definitely worth reading.

This was really special. I hadn't been sold on the comparison to Emma Clines "the girls" so I'd approached with a bit of trepidation. But this had so much warmth in the writing in comparison. I loved each of the main girls, I admired their strength, their power, their curiousity, their will, their determination. And I was heartbroken for the circumstances in which they lived, for the abuse they suffered and the hopelessness they faced.
So it is a book of contrasts, of pain, but of hope, and of will to break free from the horror of life as a young woman on the Island.
Fabulous, and very commercial and what an ending!