Two stars might be fair, or might be generous. This book was a terrible disappointment. I had enjoyed the author's prior books, so I hoped for something else interesting. Instead, this book failed for me. I would never recommend it to teens, that's for sure! In a world where men are captive and used for only, um, propagation, River finds a boy. The premise was interesting, but the actual story fell flat for me.

What we have instead is too much foul language, especially ones that are very offense to many people. Abuse, rape, folks living as captives, one gender taken for granted, a loss of diversity and uniqueness, and lopsided fragile existence that could have humanity wiped out in no time flat are just a few of the things in this book. This reported utopia is a veneer, it's falling apart. There is a horrible lack of advancement. In fact, it's reverted to more of a primal planet. Bugs for dinner anyone? Gross! There's lack of transportation, medical care, forget tech! So these gals running the world aren't doing a good job of it if you ask me. They have fallen way short of an entire bevy of goals, and have failed to even figure out a way to overcome the virus that could end humanity.

I also could not connect to most of the characters. They felt flat or two dimensional. I really wanted to like this book, but instead this book was lackluster and missed the mark for me in all the ways that count the most and seemed to turn into a platform for the author to debate conflicted ideology.

My copy came from Net Galley. A positive review is never required and this is what I thought about this book.

An interesting concept of a read. A world where a virus wipes out men and women rule the world. Definitely interesting and will pique your curiosity. Will men be able to once again live and survive in the world, or are they doomed forever?

Ambitious, and while I appreciate what the novel was trying to demonstrate, it ends up coming across a bit radical feminist and implies a world without men would be a more peaceful world. There was a lot of discussion around gender that was just brushed by that would have been interesting to explore as part of this story.

I am sorry to say that I just didn't feel like reading this one. I read the first couple of chapters and just didn't feel like I was interested enough to go on with it. There are too many other books to read.

Thank you, Netgalley, for the ARC. I skimmed this book, but decided it was not for me. I did not like the way men were viewed in this novel.

I have too many thoughts on this book and most of them are not great, so I'll start with the positives.

The concept was interesting. It hooked me, made me want to read to see where the author would go with it. In The XY, a plague wiped out most of the people on Earth with an XY chromosome, which changes everything. A few generations later, a teen girl finds an XY, a boy, and doesn't understand what he is or how he's alive in the outside world. And nothing afterward happens the way you'd think it would.

The problem, or one of them, with the XY is that it has a rather optimist view of women. I'm a feminist, which means believing in equality, and this book is surprisingly hard-hitting when it comes to the gender binary, considering all people born with XY chromosomes after the plague are kept apart from all of society so they won't die. The book assumes that without these XYs, everything would be . . . Not perfect, but definitely an idealized world. It seems to take the idea that most terrible things in the world happened because of men (which is valid, as historically men have been the ones in positions of power to make these decisions) but then takes it farther. Aggression, suspicion, jealousy, violence--those are all XY traits, in this book. It's like no woman would ever be selfish or radical or explosive.

The main character knows what dolls are, but she doesn't know what video games are because those are an XY thing (and only for the very old women, the last generation to live before the plague, and I guess they only like those things because of . . . XY influence?? I don't know). There's a whole parody on International Women's Day because the world in this book has the same but for men, and the main character repeatedly says that spending even one day on the topic is a waste of time. It's a little too on the nose and enraging.

A lot of the premise of the book focuses on how women in the new world wouldn't recognize an XY because they can't comprehend what a man looks like. I've never seen a unicorn but I can sure comprehend what it looks like. Even older women who lived before the plague don't know what an XY looks like?? The world still has access to the internet, to all sorts of communication. They can watch old videos and movies and access pictures. The MC doesn't watch these because she can't relate to them. They aren't realistic. It's like . . . Suddenly everyone in society has no interest in any entertainment. The MC looks down on her friend, the only person around who appreciates literature. It's understandable for them not to look for entertainment in a survival situation, but this isn't one. They're society is fully functioning. The MC has plenty of time to sit around and feel sorry for herself.

The book tried to be trans-inclusive in its language which was refreshing. It consistently mentioned that this was a genetic plague, so it would refer to killing all the XYs instead of referring to killing all men. There was a vague mention once that people could continue dressing/identifying the way they'd like after the plague, which was never mentioned again and was sort of thrown out the window once it was apparent that no XXs the MC, River, knew identified themselves as trans. It seems like no one in their world understands it as anything but distinctly male and female.

Which . . . For a world where women are the only ones left, you would think we could get some F/F rep. Instead there are like the blandest female relationships here so nothing could be misconstrued and if it is interpreted as a relationship, someone else could claim you misinterpreted it. This is when I start hitting my head against my desk.

This review has gone on too long already and I haven't even gotten to the plot. There were plot points that were picked up for no reason and dropped out of nowhere. No consequences for anything, no cohesive storyline. The best thing is that the book should have about fifty more pages and it doesn't. It just ends. There's no satisfying conclusion. Please don't keep reading, like I did, and expect actual answers. You'll get none.

I can't recommend this book. It's just not very well done, and it'll leave you more frustrated than anything else.

This book really annoyed me and I didn't care to finish it, but I finished it anyway. The majority of the book was based around River's inability to think of boys as human, even though she earlier said that some people choose to live as boys (i.e., trans people do exist in this world). There was finally some action around the 70% mark, but I just didn't care. The story itself didn't fit together in a way that was compelling.

I don't understand why so many people had such a strong adverse reaction to this book.. Is the thought of a female-run society really that disturbing? This idea isn't any more far fetched than all of the books with male dominated societies absent of a female presence, for instance Animal Farm and more recently the first book in the The Maze Runner series.

I like the premise of this book and albeit these females have a totally skewed perception of the male species but isn't that what would really happen if males or females were totally wiped out and the survivors and future generations had to rely upon the memories, ideals, and perceptions of only a few?

Sure the writing and the plot could stand a bit more development but I genuinely enjoyed this book and River's strength, character development, and heart.

This book sparked my interest at post-apocalyptic world ruled by girls!

Due to a virus that has killed of most of the men of the world it is now run by women. Those men that did survive must live a life of serving the women and repopulating the world by providing sperm. Our MC River has never known of boys or men and has never seen one until she comes upon a very sick boy.

River doesn’t expect him to survive because the virus is brutal but of course he does! And thus comes the mystery of why did he survive this virus? River’s mom and grandma want to keep it a secret and not tell their village, given this changes everything. But is it a good thing since the world is better off peaceful?

A female driven world may be peaceful but it has its flaws. Poor healthcare and education exist. Women are dying. Which to me seemed a little disappointing, like women can’t be doctors or educators? They can’t provide for the world without men?

This story did grab my attention right away. I just couldn’t connect with River. She whined a little much but she did grow by the end of the story. The pace was a bit slow until toward the end of the book but it was interesting.

The XY by Virginia Bergin channels Beyoncé’s fan favorite chorus, “Who run the world?
Girls,” offering a different perspective to the utopia/dystopia genre. In this world, the males of the human race have been suddenly, inexplicably, and almost wholly, been struck down by a virus leaving a world populated by only women. Notably, a few males survive and are sent to sanctuaries where they must live a life of useful servitude, contributing to the continued repopulation of the planet. This is for their safety and protection as any contact with a female will likely prove fatal, a risk that cannot be taken. The story opens with a fourth generation protagonist who has never known a boy, never experienced the world of 2018. I’m guessing it is set sometime around 2080, but that’s only a guess based on the approximate age of the grandmumma, the protagonist’s great grandmother, gleaned from her vocabulary and pop culture references. As the story opens River happens across a body in the road and the body turns out to be a very hostile but injured and sick boy. River, although completely confused and freaked out about this encounter, feels an obligation to bring the now unconscious boy home. She doesn’t expect he’ll survive. The virus is deadly and no male had previously survived longer than 24-48 hours so she feels it would be most humane to bring him home since she cannot bear to end his suffering herself. This action, of course, sets in motion the basic conflict of the story. The XY does indeed survive somehow and it appears that he may have been genetically modified to resist the virus. River’s grandmumma and mumma think that the XY’s discovery should be kept from the village for awhile, but it’s not clear why as everyone has been waiting for this miracle to occur, when the males could be brought back. Or so they say. In the absence of males the world has inevitably changed. It is a peaceful place not marked by violence or war. There are tenets that everyone agrees to and things are groovy.

The Earth comes first.
Every child is our child.
We reject all forms of violence.
We will all help each other. Knowledge must be shared.
We agree that we need to agree.
Everyone has the right to be listened to.

So that’s the setup. What follows is pretty unambitious storytelling from a very unlikeable, whiny protagonist. Turns out the XYs life in the sanctuaries is pretty rotten, all that testosterone and no place to go, and the mummas are using them and their sperm producing quality as a trading commodity with international partners. Life without men is better in some ways but lacking in many other ways like industry, transportation, agriculture, communications, etc.

The story just never takes hold for me. It’s supposedly a “female-dominated world still imperfect with questions over democracy, power, and second-class citizens,” but the character and world building were so poor that I just felt no connection to the book. Bergin says in her preface, “The more I thought about what gender is and the ways in which our ideas about it are created and transmitted—through family and intergenerational influence, through education and other forms of social and cultural transmission—the more I saw gender as an entirely arbitrary construct...So this story is told to you by River, a teenage girl who lives in a world of women but who has never really had to think about gender until the arrival of a boy changes everything.” So, gender bending. In this world, women play all the roles. They are the teachers, engineers, physicists, doctors, lawyers, politicians, and everything in between. And yet, the world they inhabit seems primitive and underdeveloped. Infrastructure is poor, food production is limited. And while there are a couple of references to global climate change and abuse of natural resources from glutinous consumers of yore, it left me thinking that the women just weren’t capable of maintaining or improving upon the physical world they inherited. Instead, they are eating insect soup and riding cantankerous horses. That seemed like a gender slap in the face, the opposite of what Bergin is aiming for. I too wonder how a world with more women in charge would look, sound, feel, and how that plays out against the human condition in general. Does power corrupt? Could there be a world that was not dominated by violence? Could social ills like poor education, healthcare, and poverty be overcome? But I do not feel like Bergin took a very deep dive here. Women are still dying from poor healthcare and a lack of health resources available to all, education seems questionable with pursuits that are more creative or fun exorcized, and representation of opinion is still limited to those in a government position. And River is a highly flawed protagonist and I didn’t find her hero’s journey the least bit plausible nor likely. We know very little about her except that she’s whiny and likes pity parties. I cannot even pin down her age. Somewhere between 11 and 18. And she may or may not have a love interest with Plat, but if so, it’s very superficial. Is she a good student, smart, ambitious, admired, loved, friendly, capable, thoughtful? Is she loving, kind, generous, innovative? Mindlessly obedient and ho hum are all that come to mind.

However, I could have overlooked thiese things, perhaps, if the story had been more engrossing, if there had been any actual conflict, and if River could have been more multifaceted and showed the tiniest bit of wonder or curiosity about Mason and how his appearance in her world was not just baffling but significant. The story had potential, but didn’t deliver.

Readers of The XY might read The Children of Men next, as both deal with a world in which some virus is affecting the population. In this case, males die. The few who appear healthy are sent to Sanctuaries, kept healthy as scientists try to find a cure. Of course they provide sperm so that the women (not affected) can have children; healthy boys are given back to the Sanctuary for safety. That's just the way it is now, sixty years later; the once-was is only alive in the memories of the grandmummas. You'd think this all-female society would be better than a mixed one, but... no. The discovery of an XY (what we'd call a boy) who has escaped his Sanctuary leads to something of an unraveling of River's world.

Sadly, there's a lot missing here: how the society really functions, for example. It's hinted at, but not really revealed. River seems to realize that her village is technologically challenged, but the why isn't clear given that there are cities and air bases that function is a more familiar way. Some reviews talk about gender roles and sexuality representation, I'll just say that the characters feel stereotypical and the plot more The Giver/The City of Ember than necessary.

eARC provided by publisher.

My Review: I am just not sure what to say about this book. There were so many issues with it word choice, and so many trigger warnings that I would use up have this review if I tried to list them all but some of them are extremlly weird/off the wall discussions of gender, attempted rape, and murder. I ended up DNFing this one about 40% in.

While parts of the premise are a bit far-fetched, I did find The XY compelling and it serves to get you thinking, which is always a good thing.

The setting is a near future where there are no more males in the population. A virulent virus killed males, and those that were able to be saved and newborn males are all kept in sanctuaries around the world. Women are the rulers and the caretakers of the earth. Almost all countries have signed "The Global Agreements" that consist of things like rejecting all violence and vows to always all help each other.

So they live in this utopia, where there are no more wars and life is simple. I need to make a couple of somewhat negative comments before we go on. Just because you tell people to play nice, whether they are female or not, doesn't mean that's going to happen. And also, society seemed very primitive. I was saddened by this because, in essence, the author is saying that if there weren't any males, technology would fail and women wouldn't be able to fix it. Thirdly, an amazing amount of physical labor was done by everyone -- even small children -- and it just didn't seem like life should be that hard. There were also several things I really liked about this new society too, so I don't want to sound too harsh.

River is a teen girl who runs into an XY (a boy) who is almost dead along the road. She manages to get him to her home, and all of the women are sure he's going to die of the virus. But he doesn't. They begin to learn that life in the sanctuaries is a living hell -- not the life that the women thought their men were being given. There are several moral dilemmas for River and her mom and granmmumma, as well as the other women of the town. They are breaking The Global Agreements, but they also are beginning to think the government is keeping secrets from them. Granmummas are the older women who still remember life before the virus. And River's Granmumma Kate is a bright spot.

Like I said, The XY left me with a lot to think about. I think there is enough material here for a sequel, but I have no idea if it is being planned. The XY is a quick read, and even though I struggled with some of the premises, I would still recommend it to teens who are interested in futuristic stories of this type.

The XY is a compelling and unique work of speculative fiction that asks the question, what if? What if a drastic illness reduced the population by half. What would the world look like? How would things have changed 60 years on? What if the half that was left to start over were all female? What if a young girl, who has only know life in this new era, met a boy, a strange creature she recognises only from history lessons? How would she treat him, how would it change her world?

River lives in a world two generations on from an event that changed everything. When she finds an injured stranger on the road home, she is shocked to discover it is an XY - a boy. When she saves his life and takes him back to her community, it will forever change her life and how she views her world.

The XY instantly caught my attention with its intriguing summary. A world where men have disappeared, a world where gender norms are switched or challenged. It wasn’t until much later, after requesting a review copy, that I realised this book has already generated a fair amount of buzz and criticism, having already been published by a different publisher under a different name. I do not know if the text has been dramatically altered between the editions or not, but for clarity, my review is of the 2018 Sourcebooks Fire publication.

I was impressed with the writing style and the overall effect of the novel. It’s clever, thought-provoking and undoubtedly going to create a stir. When I mentioned this title to my high-school book club members, I was instantly met with delight from the girls and outrage from the boys. But I do not, personally, think this book is about man hate. Nor do I think it is trying to say that women are better than men. The cause of the reduced crime and complete restructuring of the world is not because it is run by women as such but more because of the massive event that led to women running the world. Image the death of half the population. If that happened today that would be a loss of 3.8 billion people. That would be a massive, hugely horrific and traumatic event, and that’s exactly how it is portrayed in The XY. Things changed not because men are bad, women are good and the death and segregation of the former led to the freedom of the later, but because things had to change and with change came the opportunity to start afresh. To enact new, fairer ways of governing. To create an international set of agreements that value life and truth. To protect the environment. Perhaps the world wouldn’t be a peaceful as it is in River’s world - but I’d like to think that men or women would try to make the world a better place. Perhaps, if removed from the world and segregated from women, men wouldn’t remain in an army-style, video-gaming, woman-hating lifestyle. Again, Bergin makes it clear that this is just one section of the male population, and that perhaps other sections were raised differently (then again, you just have to look to some of our leaders today and it becomes totally plausible). But for the purposes of the story, it provides the necessary what if question - What if women created a new world, a new way of living without fear and restrictions and what if men continued to live with the same overall mindsets of today’s world.

The trauma of the death of the male population is remembered by the grandmummas, but a boy is a new and very strange thing to River and others of her generation. I love River’s voice and the first person narration that allows the reader to be fully immersed in her world and thoughts. She very funny, and I loved her fire, indignation, confusion and compassion. There were so many times I laughed - out loud, snort-laughter - at something she or her great-grandmother Kate, said. She loathes Mason and the troubles he has brought to her world.

Aside from a dear relationship between River and her friend Plat, there is no romance in this story. There is also little action. Instead, introspection, humour and quiet reform are the strengths of this book. It doesn’t delve too deeply into the world outside River’s sphere, doesn’t explore all facets of the new society. Make what you will of the world Bergin has created. Maybe you would have written it differently, maybe you think a world without men or a sanctuary removed from any female input would be quite different, but it any case, I found The XY to be a thought-provoking and thoroughly enjoyable novel.

The publishers provided an advanced readers copy of this book for reviewing purposes. All opinions are my own.

Thank you netgally for the ARC in an exchange for an honest review.

The idea of having a world run by women where al men are basically extinct is quite interesting. So I thought it was going to be about how would that happen and from a perspective of a teenager would be fresh in a way.
But this is very messy, the world building is all over the place. Is set 60 years in the future and it seams like no woman in this world knew much about farming, engineering, politics, law, health, education. And apparently no body has seen a gym, or heard of sympathy for human kind. (I found that patronising for the women in the present times)
The story is very confusing because there is a lot of contradiction in it. Like being all “good” “all children belong to us”. yet as soon as Mason turns up, a person is referred as an “It” (for about 50% of the book).rather than as a human or a man or a new pronoun. It’s believed that there is very to no crime (only because the world is mostly xx) and then all men are bad, they are thieves, rapists, assassins.. yet out “hero” kills a man and gets away with it??
I don’t know why the author decided to “evolve” the language the way she did, Granmumma? For the leaders of a great society, nothing wrong with being a Gran parent but maybe just not a word I would personally feel comfortable using for the heads of state . Then past is refered as “once-was” as if the word “past” wasn’t used by people hundred years ago, because of that I felt there wasn’t history lessons or proper education, but then River is studying thermodynamics, or was it aviation? and Plat is studying Law. The narrators voice sounds like a 12-13 year old, but we are reading a very ignorant 18 YO
Because the world building wasn’t really thought throughout, the inconsistencies are very obvious and cringe worthy, the way that some parts of the world are explain are just laughable “wonky breast are normal” what does that even mean? Most women have uneven size breast anyway, so Does it mean that there are some extra deformities after the men died? Or there aren’t any bras? Or that no one uses them? Or nobody needs them? So many little details that are just frustrating to read because are not fully developed. I’m not suggest a second book or anything just to set the scenario in a more coherent way.

Unlike other reviewers I don’t see this book as man hating, because we are supposed to follow a person who grew up in a society without them, if I ever encounter an extraterrestrial being I would be scared and i think I would fear that they don’t come in peace and something terrible would happen to me, so I can put that idea into perspective.
H P Lovecraft wrote “feat of the unknown” is the most common type of fear, and I do agree with that but then in the other hand the “lovely granmummas” created a mantra type thing that I didn’t like at all “man Men him he murder rape guns war...” and because is repited often in the book I just can’t believe the Grabmummas are such nice people. They sounded as terrible as this somebody who said this: they take your jobs, they’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they are rapists, and some I assume are good people.


Im just glad I manage to finish it.

River is a girl who’s grown up in a generation without men—the few survivors of the gender specific plague live in protected enclaves. When she encounters a sick, violent XY, she has to challenge her assumptions, and a lot of the time she doesn’t want to, while the grandmothers who remember day to day interactions with men insist on getting justice for him. I don’t know how I feel about the story—YA could have more nuance than this, though there was interesting stuff going on in the background about how the men had been raised as stereotypes and accepted or fought it to varying extents.

In a future where most of the male population has been eradicated this is a flawless imagining of a world where women have had to take control of all areas of life. For the younger generation this is the only world they have ever known so when a young girl River finds a boy lying half read in the road she starts to question her whole world. This was an interesting read that kept me gripped throughout and left me questioning my own ideas and perceptions. Definitely a book I would recommend in store!

I, like many others, had very high hopes for this book and the world it is set in, however, it did not meet my expectations, or come close for that matter. I do not hate this book, and I understand the context of it being set 60 years after anyone has seen a man, but with only the female point of view and the mentions of a significant decrease in crime it reads as male-hating. I think the author could have done a better job of contextualizing River's fear of Mason, so the readers are more sympathetic instead of becoming irritated with the very anti-male mindset she has.

In addition to the difficulties with some of the plot, I had a difficult time reading the author's descriptions and became quickly annoyed with River's voice. There were many instances of random and unnecessary capitalization, repetition, and excessive punctuation (mostly exclamation marks). River was written as very juvenile and young, despite being a teenager, and coupled with the writing mentioned above, I had a hard time getting through the book.

My last issue with the novel was the lack of representation of LGTBQ+ people. There were a few mentions of possibly trans-men, but almost none of trans-women and lesbians. I thought for sure there would be lesbians because it is just a society of women, and they must be comfortable being together and out, but the society was written as heteronormative. The mentions of lesbians were written as though they were only together because of a lack of men, not just attraction to women. This story could have had really great representation and made the world more interesting, but sadly the author did not use the opportunity.

Again, I didn't hate it and still found many parts of the plot to be interesting and worth reading, but overall I was underwhelmed and unimpressed with how a very intriguing dystopian world was written into a less than intriguing book.

This book is a complete mess and so confusing. The first page when River found the body was okay, but after that nothing made sense. Who is talking? Is it the boy? I guess... Well, not really talking but speaking in his mind. And he too is surprised by River. Why? Didn't he know they existed? I think the story would've been more interesting from the boy's point of view.

All this people acting surprised because of the boy but without a real explanation of why he was so amazing just annoyed me; I was like "it is just a person like you." But obviously he was not.

Thank you Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this title

I loved The Rain and The Storm, but I'm afraid this one just isn't as good as them. It's a very clever idea, but it's dealt with either with people talking nonsensically about things they should all know already, or endless exposition. And towards the end I got very confused about what was actually going on. I'm sorry, because I genuinely enjoy the author and I think the idea was good, it just didn't come together well. I'll keep reading her books, though.

Receiving an ARC did not affect my review in any way.