One word review: Electrifying

Rambling review: Thrilling, compulsive, smart, electrifying, petrifying, poignant.

This book will leave you speechless, leave you screaming, leave you analysing the breadth of your own vocabulary, leave you questioning your own morality and how far you will go to protect your own, protect society.

It's incredibly intelligent (I found myself feeling almost one step behind as the plot thickened) and sharp, playing on the current climate deftly. There were numerous nods to the current political discourse in America today which made it even more haunting: “make America moral again.”

I will be forcing this into the hands of everyone, especially women.

[100 daily word limited reached]

** blog post to go live on August 20th **

I do wonder if it would be easier to have no word allowance at all than to be restricted to 100 words per day. This is definitely not a book that made me envious of the characters’ lives and I did feel the need to remind myself repeatedly that it was a work of fiction and not treat it as a vision of the future. I didn’t particularly take to the main character Jean but I did get a little emotional about her 6 year old daughter Sonia. I can imagine book groups having some lively discussions about this one.

(100 words)

This was compared to The Handmaid's Tale - and for obvious reasons. It does tackle some of similar themes but it's always dangerous to compare to such a phenomenal book as Atwood's as it's almost certainly not going to match up. A worth contender, however.

I’m still chilled by this book. It is a really good piece of dystopian fiction but with a premise so disturbing that at times it can be a tough read. Our heroine, Jean, lives in the US where after the rise of a new president far-right religious fundamentalists have taken over. Women and girls have all been fitted with counters on their wrists – they are allocated 100 words a day and if they go over this they are punished with electric shocks, increasing in severity with the degree of the infraction. Women’s rights are completely stripped away – they are once again considered men’s property whose only role is in the home, silently feeding and caring for their children and husband. Jean used to be a neuroscientist and when the president’s brother suffers brain damage she is, out of necessity, called in to work on the cure. It is then that she discovers a secret plan to permanently silence women.

Jean is a hugely sympathetic character, struggling to cope with her new reality and watching in horror at the effect the new regime has on her children – her young daughter is practically mute and her eldest son has been so indoctrinated that he is a monster.

This is such a horrifying premise and so chillingly rendered. Every time I put down the book I felt a desperate need to talk. It really makes you think about the importance of having your own voice both in your personal life and in the wider world. Jean constantly berates herself for missing the signs, for her lack of political engagement, which is an important message for us all.

I have been hearing talking about this book for months and months and when I finally got my hands on an early copy, for which I’d like to thank HQ, I devoured it in two days. I was completely blown away by its unrealistic and scary plot and I couldn’t put it down.

In a near future, a pure religion movement has taken control of the government of the United States and has established a law according to which women are allowed to use only 100 words a day. And to be sure they follow this law the women have to wear a bracelet that gives them electric shocks whenever they go over the limit. The protagonist and narrator of this novel is Jean McClellan. She was a linguist scientist before all women were banned from doing any job. I shared Jean’s frustration and anger as she watches helplessly as women are forced to give up not only talking, but also working or even simply reading a book or the mail. All they have to do is to take care of their house and their family, waiting for the men to come home. There are bracelets that keep your word count, cameras that watch every step you make, and men that take you away to camps if you do something that it’s deemed impure. Jean has four children, one of which is a six-year-old girl who is so scared to talk that she never uses her 100 words a day. On the other hand, her seventeen-year-old son Steven is being brainwashed at school in becoming one of the government puppets. But how did they get to this? Through Jean’s flashbacks, we see how nobody really believed that something like this could really happen until it did.

I really liked the character of Jean. She is strong-willed and determined and, even though she is limited to 100 words a day, she doesn’t give up on hope that one day things will be better and fights for her right to speak. She wants a better future for her daughter and all the other women and this makes her brave and dangerous.

VOX is chilling, it’s scary and it makes you furious and frustrated at the way not only women, but also people of different race or LGQBT are treated page after page. It’s a dystopian thriller full of twists, it’s suspenseful, compelling, and completely gripping, and it should be on everyone reading list.

An apt book at a time when women's rights are being discussed more with movements like #meto this is a fast paced and gripping dystopian read set in the near future where women have lost their rights to work, read and speak. A tracker band on the wrist of every woman and girl in America keeps them shackled in silence, only able to speak 100 words a day or be punished with increasingly severe electric shocks.

This novel looks at the effect of this not only on women and girls but on the boys being raised in such an environment and how quickly they can become indoctrinated with the message that they a re superior. As a mother how do you react to being told you are a second class citizen by your own child, can you still love and respect a husband that you can't communicate with even within your own home?

There were some truly horrifying moments that made my heart leap, mostly involving Sonia the 6 year old daughter off our main protagonist Jean.

It was a thought provoking and disturbing novel. Although I do have to wonder , would women really sit quietly by and let this happen, would most men roll over and let their partners, wives, mothers, daughters be silenced so completely. Having said that the pathway was so simple and well laid out by the author, the stealth removal of passports, removal of birth control etc that it felt very real and scarily possible.

It isn't a perfect novel there were a few elements that jarred a little, such as Jean's 11 year old twins, who seemed to be written as much younger children despite their age being mentioned several times. Overall once I started I couldn't put it down.

In a near-future USA, society has changed greatly from what we know. If it were down to social media slogans it would be #malelivesmatter, #no,mefirst,youdistantlytwo, or suchlike. But it came down to a religious upswelling from men, and religiously-minded men in an expanded Bible belt, that forced their way to the top. Down with homosexuals, bring back an ancient idea of the nuclear family, remove the colour issue, and most of all, shut women up. From now on they are forced to wear wristbands that electrocute them if they vocalise more than a hundred words per day. Everyone is on CCTV to make sure nobody gets used to sign language. Writing implements and books are male-only preserves. In this world, however, our heroine finds herself in a great quandary. If she undergoes a job she is loathe to do, she would once more be 'free' in the sense of having her old career back, as opposed to her drudgery and housework, and back in the world of the vocal – but only while she carries that work out. Can she even bring herself to take it on?

Whatever the brilliance of the situation, and however well the high concept is married with the narrative, there are flaws here. You're supposed to love Jean, but she says too much about the weaknesses of man, and whinges too much about even her own children's behaviours. And the book also ticked me off. Yes, it has a highly removed world – women aren't allowed congress, books, alcohol and so much more besides self-expression, but this is always compared to Nazi Germany. Yet the book didn't even need arranged marriage to come into it for anyone to see the clearest comparison with the prehistoric religious lifestyle here is with Islam. It's all down to an Ayatollah-styled TV guru, and not initially a political movement. Here is an author clearly not brave enough to say that out loud.

She's not quite got a perfect grasp on the action scene, either, for I found the closing chapters a little woolly. Still, the chapter count is high, the readability is generally strong, and the page turning is done quite rapidly, with this – a book to be lauded for aiming high with a mind to making you think, as opposed to something that doesn't try much and just acts as a diversion.

Three and a half stars.

Far too evocative of the Handmaids Tale to be a new and exciting piece of work. It is however well written and as with the Handmaids Tale tells a worryingly possible story of the way America could very well go. Gripping and terrifying at the same time it is not for the fainthearted.

There are however important issues regarding women and their right to speak that will echo with the #metoo generation. This is a book published at exactly the right time and I hope it reaches a large audience among young women.

This has to be my best read of the year. It gripped me from page 1, not only a brilliant concept and excellent writing, but something that could only too easily happen. This gave the book an extra frisson and me plenty of food for thought. I even tried just speaking 100 words a day and then read it again - in my eyes this is a future classic. move over Clockwork Orange! I have seen the other comments re anti-Christian etc, but I find this a fascinating piece of fiction that rightly stirs up feeling – if I read a book that didn’t move me in some way I would be disappointed. A truly great read.

Vox is a very powerful and timely novel that follows hot on the heels of books like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale or Naomi Alderman’s The Power. It is set in a near future in which the Christian religious right has taken control of America. With The Pure Movement, the government seeks to return America to state of grace in which the family and the patriarchy are key. Women must understand their place as home makers, supporting their husbands through deed and not word.

Bracelets are introduced for all women and girls that count the number of words they can say in a day. Once they go over 100 they are given a mild electric shock. Keep talking and the severity of the shocks increase.

Jean was once a cognitive linguist and leader in the field of curing aphasia – a state in which the brain forgets how to make sense of language. When the President’s brother has an accident that leaves him with aphasia, they call Jean back to work, removing her bracelet, offering her a reminder of the freedoms of the recent past. She doesn’t want to help them, but she does want to free her young daughter who is about to win a prize for speaking the least number of words in a week. If she can get the bracelet off her daughter, even for a time, helping the government and regaining a sense of purpose might be worth it.

But do they really want to find a cure for aphasia? How useful might it be to turn that cure around and use it to silence?

While her husband plays the game, working for the government, her sons grow more extreme in their misguided views of the natural order and old desires for colleagues, old memories of feminist friends who saw it all coming, rise up and ask her to question what she should do next.

It’s not a beautiful book. I don’t read it mesmerised by the sentence structure, but I am gripped by the storyline and the message Vox conveys left me very shaky with anger and fear. Not only did this government seek to silence women, it also locked up homosexuals in cells with one woman and one man, waiting for them to see the light and form proper acceptable families. It makes it clear that other minorities will soon be vulnerable to correction too.

Written by a theoretical linguist who spells out her message in her preamble, Vox has a clear directive: appreciate your rights and use them fully; don’t slide into apathy for fear of what might take hold while you’re looking the other way.

You’ll read Vox in a few short hours, compelled forward by the tension in the narrative, and feel affected by it for some time to come. It’s a thought-provoking kick in the mouth that fulfils a current taste for speculative dystopias and asks us to question why we want to read them.

This was a very thought provoking book, that focuses your mind on how much we speak in everyday interactions. The plot centres around a new regime in the US that limits women to speaking only 100 words a day. The theme was similar to that of A Handmaids Tale, but the importance of speech is central to the novel. Parallels are drawn between the limiting of speech by society and the loss of speech incurred by victims of strokes - the main protagonist was a lead researcher in this area. I found that the story raced along, and it was hard to put this book down, I couldn't wait to see how things would be resolved in the end. Some of the relationship between the characters were slightly unbelievable, but perhaps people see the bigger picture when they are uniting against such a misogynistic regime. All in all I would recommend this book to anyone.

I received a free ebook version of this book through Netgalley. Thankyou to both Netgalley and the publisher! My review is still honest.

I feel like I should begin this review by saying that I am extremely lucky to have the privilege that I do. Every woman experiences oppression of some sort, but as a white woman living in Britain, a relatively liberal country that currently has a female head of state, I am offered protections that so many others do not receive. This book, however, does a fantastic job of teaching us not to be complacent. Just because we have good opportunities and aren’t treated abominably, it does not mean that others have the same experience. Standing up for them is not only morally right, but this book really shows that these small instances of sexist belief, when unchallenged, have the capacity to grow and influence, something which I unfortunately see happening in areas of the world today. This is a book with a message, and one this world sorely needs.
Vox takes place in a world where women have very few rights. Every woman, from birth, must wear a counter on their wrist that counts their words in a day up to 100, after which the woman will receive electric shocks, to death if necessary. Not only does this book deal with the politics and rage induced by this change, it focuses a lot on family life and the individuals. How does this restriction affect mothers, relationships and even men? It leaves no stone unturned. Jean is a woman in constant conflict with herself about how to raise her daughter and sons in a sexist world, and it was truly heart-wrenching at times. These characters leave an impression.
I can’t say this is a perfect book. The plot could be too convenient at times, some things could be a little confusing, or come out of nowhere and I personally felt the ending wrapped things up a little too well for this kind of story. I usually hate open endings, but I’m not sure it works for a book of this nature. If you weren’t a fan of The Handmaid’s Tale because of the open ending, I would highly recommend this one. I suppose the overall point of this review is to say that despite its flaws, this book is important, it is timely and it should be read by many. Read this book, and learn from it, as I did.

Such a good read; I really enjoyed Vox and yet found it believably scary at the same time. Well-paced, gripping and clever, Vox is an interesting take on a dystopian novel.

I thought the impact on and of the children was particularly telling, and helped speak to how the situation arose - or was allowed to arise - over time. The ending did feel a little contrived and far-fetched, but also did include a twist that I didn't see coming and was grateful for.

In an environment where women can only speak 100 words a day, and the consequences of going over are terrifying, Dr Jean McClellan attempts to reclaim her voice. I felt the length was appropriate, and the medical and technical language didn't put me off - it acted as a reminder as to the core themes and the level of expertise of the characters.

I received an advance copy for review from the publisher via Netgalley.

I loved the concept of this book. With strong echoes of The Handmaid’s Tale, Vox imagines a near future where women are literally silenced by the patriarchy. Every female is forced to wear a bracelet or ‘counter’ that monitors her speech and limits her to a paltry 100 words a day. Any more than that, and a horrific electric shock is administered. The government is formed of a fundamentalist Christian groups and severe punishments are handed out for sex outside marriage, improper behaviour, homosexuality... it paints a dark and depressing picture.

The novel centres around Jean, a one time neuroscientist specialising in linguistics, now trapped in the home with four children, a detached husband and a limited voice. The parts of the book that spoke most to me were those that explored the relationship between Jean and her daughter Sonia, who is growing up in a world where she is denied the speech her brothers take for granted.

I think I would like to have seen more of an exploration of how it all happened, and how society allowed these changes to be made. This was covered, but not in a huge amount of depth (as I suppose the plot needed to progress).

The final third of the novel felt quite rushed to me - everything was happening very quickly, but I wasn’t always clear on what was happening. And I’m still quite confused about what exactly happened at the very end.

But I’d still recommend this book, for the terrifying concept alone, and the time spent on the relationship between Jean and her daughter.

There are two covers for this book that I have seen. I honestly like them both and I think either will stand out on a bookstore shelf so both do their job very well. If I absolutely had to choose one? My love of a great byline would make me choose the dark cover, but, the white cover and the x over the females mouth is such a stark, striking image too.
The genres I have seen listed for this book are Sci-Fi, Dystopian which fit perfectly but I would also add futuristic to this list.

This book is set in America, though the setting would also work over here in the UK. The government (all male of course) has passed a law that women are only allowed to use 100 words per day! It doesn't stop at limiting women to just 100 words soon women are not allowed jobs, they are supposed to stay in the home and keep the family home ticking over, caring for the children, and having the dinner ready for their husband coming home, they are not allowed to hold any job of responsibility.

There really is an inequality within everyone's household. The central character in this story is Dr Jean McLellan who is ironically a well educated woman who trained as a cognitive linguist forced to give up her career to men with lesser qualifications. She has to stay home and isn't even allowed access to books. She cannot use a computer, anything for the use of communication is locked away in her husbands office. Her husband is quite literally her jailer. Jean isn't even secondary in the pecking order at home. Her son is held in higher esteem and has more authority than she has herself. When her son Steven becomes deeper and involved with a movement called the Pure movement and really believes women should not be at work or allowed to read books. Steven wears his badge as a member of the Pure movement with pride. Jean cannot believe the change in her son and his attitude. His actions and words certainly fit the governments expectations, he truly seems to think women are an inferior race and should be ruled over by men. This doesn't sit well at all with Jean, his educated mother. In fact it makes her think back to her years o education and a friend, Jackie Juarez who had told her she should be out protesting with her but Jean was dedicated to her books and never thought things would go this far. Jean remembers the last time she saw Jackie on TV, she was labelled a feminazi and sent away to work in the fields.

Jean is devastated to learn that her son Steven has reported his next door neighbour/girlfriend, Julia King for what he considers an infraction of the governments rules. Julia is taken away in the night and like all protesters or those considered to be breaking the law she is sentenced to working on the farms and a life of silence, she isn't allowed any words at all.

I guess I should explain how the government enforces the 100 words per day policy. Every female from the youngest children to the oldest woman is fitted with a cuff which counts their words as they use them. If the female wearing the cuff goes over her 100 words per day she is sent an electrical type shock through her cuff. So is harshly punished for over use of words. There is no way out of this life. Even if women wanted to leave the country with her family she is unable to do so as all females had their passports confiscated and n new ones are being issued.

Dr Jean McLellan is given the chance of a small reprieve when the President wants her to continue some scientific work she had been doing before America changed. It turns out he needs a serum to give his brother who is suffering from a brain disorder/damage which was the scientific are Jean and her team had been working on. Jean decides to help so long as she can choose her team Lin and Lorenzo to help her. The price/payment she receives is the removal of her cuff and her young daughter Sonia's cuff. Jean intends to enjoy what little freedom this "work" will give her. She fall right back into the affair she was having with Lorenzo, which is risky as if found out she will be sent to the farms to work hard labour until death!

There is so much going on in this book and it truly is a conversation starter. I'd also say it is something that could quite realistically happen. I mean there's still a political row going on about getting equal pay for women, and certain professions are still mostly male dominated.

I was pulled into this book almost immediately within the first 4% ! As a reader you are thrown right into the dystopian society with its rules and regulations. To be totally honest looking around at our present political leaders around the world is a scenario that is really believable and doesn't take to much imagination to envision it. I found the plot of this book amazing twist on a society. Women, even young girls must be fitted with a counter and are limited to the 100 words! If you just go over, a reminder shock is entirely through your counter.....if you continue to speak even though you have used you allotted words the shocks get stronger and stronger. It's not only words that have been taken from the female part of society...." There really seems no end to the torment of women in this society yet still some women look down on others. Making it seem in places were women are their own worst enemy, if they banded together they could make a bigger impact but it just takes a few brave women to stand together.

I really enjoyed reading this book it was really thought provoking the society going back to a time where women were thought lesser important than men and are sentenced to a life of drudgery and silence.

I was so very excited by the concept of this book - in a very near future US, women are forced to wear a bracelet that restricts the amount of words they can say during the day to 100. Other rights are also taken way - women no longer can have jobs, travel, live independently, read, write... The main character of the book, Dr Jean McClellan, a well known neurolinguist (now Mrs McClellan, really), has a chance to speak again - and her words and actions might give voice to other women too.

It is a familiar dystopian concept, but in "Vox" it became somehow chillingly more realistic. One would think that this sort of thing will never happen, but then we did not expect many things in recent history that have sadly taken place. But what the author shows well are the small steps in which the lives of women are changing, and how inaction can speed them up, how we learn to accept - out of fear or out of indifference.

"Vox " is really gripping and engaging book, well written (although I must say I struggled with the neurolinguistic jargon!), and I believe fans of "The Handmaid's Tale" and "Red Clocks" will enjoy it. The only thing I am not sure about was the ending, as it was fitting, but somehow I had expected something else. Overall, "Vox" definitely deserves attention and hopefully readers will enjoy it as much as I did.

it was amazing

I really enjoyed this thought-provoking book. I found it to be reminiscent of The Handmaids Tale, with women being forced into a `traditional role' by a backward president with no mind of his own, led by his older brother and a zealot preacher who tell him what to do and say.

I can't imagine being restricted to 100 words a day and forced into marriage or a who're house or prison. To have no funds or rights of my own. Yet there are some that would no doubt love to see us reduced to that, zealots mostly.

An intriguing and engrossing read.

This is an unpolished review. I recieved this book in exchange for an honest review and boy am I going to be honest. Be warned that this contains spoilers

I am angry at this book. Not because of the political ideologies and not because it holds an unspoken truth, but because it has the potential to be damaging. It's sold as "The Next Handmaid's Tale" but only achieves that through blatent copying. The important, timeless things from the original are gone replaced by a narrative better suited to an action move. It's important to note that the idea was absolutely wonderful, but that the execution makes one tremble in horror. Unfortunantely, this is a think piece, not a masterpiece, and I’m saddened that it will be upheld as the next handmaid’s tale.

This book is divided. One hemisphere demands that the book rushes through substance to get to the action. It wants to scream "LOOK AT HOW BADASS MY CHARACTER IS" and that "SHE'S THE REVOLUTION, SHE'S THE KATNISS OF THIS WORLD". It wants to take it's readers on a rollercoaster ride where the wind is so incredibly fast that it forces them to close their eyes and just let go. This half wants the experience to matter. The other hemisphere, the notion behind the blurb and the advertising, wants to stuff the book with substance. It wants shocking silence and long days of deep thought. It wants worried whispers wriggling into our brains at night; keeping us awake and watchful. It wants to be important. Regrettably, these two sides appear to hate each other.

So much of the book mimics the Handmaid's Tale that it makes complete sense to have her character be normal – someone passive who is experiencing the world deteriorate. Unfortunately, Dalcher seems to be at a loss at what to do with her character. As stated earlier, this book has two different sides to it and they push and pull the protagonist between them until she becomes a caricature. Some people might go as far to call her a 'special snowflake' or a Mary Sue.

We're supposed to believe that she's a badass, someone who enjoys being alternative yet is surprised by herself when she realises that she wants to do something against the regime. She simpers to herself that "they can’t be mine, these spy-like thoughts" ( pg. 184 ) even though Dalcher has done her hardest to portray her as a rebel. In previous chapters, the readers have been told that she "watched them, these women" ( pg. 42 ) and getting anecdotes about people who the protagonist didn't even know (a sure sign that she was just watching strangers). The result of these contradications indicate that either the character completely lacks self awareness or the author had no direction.

☞ | HOW DOES IT HANDLE RELIGION?

This book has a huge problem with Christianity. However, unlike the Handmaid's Tale, there appears to be a great deal of author bias melted into the narrative. There is no careful disection of how or why Christianity has subjugated the country, but rather it depends on the reader already having a preconcieved negative idea of the faith. This is an extremely dangerous precedent to lie on.

Dalcher claims that the religion and the "philosophy" ( pg. 23 ) of this religion are what bring the downfall of the American people but chooses to focus very little of her time on religious aspects. It gets a few mentions and the antagonist is a reverend but apart from that it appears that the protagonist loathes a religion just because it's a religion. This is, honestly, quite an ugly look. I say this as a person not of any religion. I also recognise that, like all things in life, religion does have it's flaws but that does not mean we should hate it just for the sake of it. This is not a dystopian with made up dictators or a fantasy regime. This is advertised as a feasible dystopian for people alive now and, because of that, there needs to be more of an effort to explain how it happens. Simply stating that 'it's just Christianity's fault' is lazy writing and does nothing to contribute to the seriousness of the novel.

☞ | WHY ARE THE SAVIOURS MEN?

First and foremost, this is supposed to be a feminist narrative. So tell me: why are all of the saviours men? It's a man who finally "isolated the protein” ( pg. 119 ) to make the formula work, a man who eventually brings down the government and a man who engineers technology that tricks the government officials. Our character shoots someone. Not only does she shoot someone, but that shot is the reason her husband (the man who silences the entire government) gets gunned down. Sorry, what?

This character is literally the human equivilant of all bark and no bite. She constantly complains about how her husband is “not a believer and he’s not a woman-hating asshole; he’s just weak” ( pg. 80 ) all the while doing nothing herself. She doesn't make a stand. She doesn't think about other women. It all seems like a great inconvinience to her but is apparently justified for other women because they're "the Susie Homemakers" ( pg. 31 ), "a Kool-Aid head" ( pg. 44) or "a tart" ( pg. 129 ).

The first time that we meet her esteemed and intelligent working partner the protagonist notes that her colleague’s "breasts and ass make ( her ) look like a Peter Paul Rubens model" ( pg. 120 ). If you didn't catch that, the protagonist starts making assessments about her friend's physical appearance before calling her smart. She compliments herself while putting the other woman down. It can be assumed that this is to make her feel superior, as the other woman is intelligent in ways that she is not. This is not uncommen in real life – people putting down more knowledgable or prettier people in order to feel better about themselves. It's just out of place in a novel centered around feminism. The character does not see the problem with demeaning other women and yet is shocked when others do it to her.

☞ | UM, IS CHEATING SUPPOSED TO BE GOOD?

As stated previously, this dystopian novel makes the men the heroes. In this specific case, the only way that the protagonist can escape America is through a man with whom she cheated with a few months back. Basically, the novel is telling us that cheating is good. It seems to imply that everyone should 'cheat on your significant other, because someone else might be more useful' or that 'cheating is totally fine because we're free women who can do what we want'. First of all, no. Second of all, no. Now understand that I am all for sexual freedom. Sleep with who you want. But I'm really not here for emotional abuse. I'm not here for taking advantage of someone who loves you. I'm not here for betraying your partners trust and going behind their back. That, to me, is a terrible narrative – especially since there are very few mentions of divorce. The protagonist mentions that she's unsure if she ever loved her husband, yet doesn't discuss anything with him. Doesn't try to fix it. Doesn't bring up divorce. She just shacks up with someone else and he ends up being her saviour. We're supposed to go 'thank goodness she cheated when she did'. Ugh, what a mess.

☞ | IT'S A CARBON COPY?

Vox doesn’t just take inspiration from the Handmaid’s Tale it's almost like it wants to be the Handmaid's Tale. I read this straight after Atwood’s book and it felt like I was reading a carbon copy. Both main characters have: a lesbian best friend who shakes their fist at the system, a lesbian best friend who gets caught, a lover to aspire and dream about, a young daughter who she worries about, a sympathetic yet extremely passive male companion, a quiet place in the rebellion and a surprise ally in the form of a higher rank.

Jean McClellan is bi-lingual. She can speak both English and Italian; however, she is only allowed to say 100 words a day. The American government has turned back the hands of time, to a simpler time when the men went to work and the women stayed at home, cooking, cleaning and caring for the children. To ensure this happens, every female in the US has been fitted with a counter that shocks the wearer if they exceed their daily 100 word quota! That is until Jean’s expertise in neurolinguistics is needed and her counter is removed. Can she use this opportunity to right the wrongs against womankind and give them their voices back?

I read this in only a few hours. It is easy to read and very engaging. It got me angered and riled up like no other book ever has. For the first three quarters of the book I was all ready to give it 4 maybe even 5 stars but it fell short at the last hurdle. With a quarter of the book left to go I felt for sure that it must be the first of a series because I didn’t feel like there was enough time left to come to a conclusion. It did, however, reach a conclusion which all felt very rushed to me and with a lot of things left unexplained. I would still recommend it to those who love dystopian fiction.

Thank you to Netgalley, Christina Dalcher and HQ for my ARC of Vox. 


Set in a not too distant future version of America Vox is an evocative novel where a religious cult leader is pulling the president's strings and women have been restricted to speaking no more than 100 words today, and guess what? That includes reading!

We hear the story from the perspective of Dr Jean McClellan, previously a renowned linguistic specialist/scientist, now expected to stay home and be a housewife, especially with her teenage son fully buying into the new regime. Jean doesn't just fear and feel frustrated for herself though but for her six year old daughter as well. A child who is already learning that staying silent comes with positive rewards. Jean must do what she can to get back not only her own voice but every woman & girl's as well.

The story was really interesting, it kept me hooked. But it made me so angry, this is a good thing because obviously you want a book to provoke emotion in you but at the same time it was so frustrating because I just felt so angry, I was even getting angry at my boyfriend for imagined misogyny haha!

I think the idea is really new, it's not been done before. There's a lot of dystopian novels out there that deal with female oppression but Christina Dalcher really brought something fresh and new to the table.

I'm looking forward to seeing more from this author!