I enjoyed listening to the audio book. I also read the book and I liked the audio book the same as the book. The story is interesting, the plot good and the characters well described.

**I received an ARC from NetGalley for an honest review**

When I first read the plot synopsis, I was fairy excited to read Athena's Choice. And the plot synopsis is why I'm giving this three stars instead of two. The idea of a world of only females existing after a pandemic eliminates the entirety of the male population is incredibly interesting, and the results of such a thing essentially lead to a peaceful world.

While the plot potential is there, the overall flatness of the characters are what caused me to downgrade my rating. Rather than flesh out a character's personality, Boostrom chose to describe the character's physical attributes, usually making them almost perfect (with three exceptions that stuck out- one characters looked old, one chose to be curvy compared to the average woman, and one had a scar on her face that she chose not to have removed).

Other than Athena's gray eyes, there was nothing memorable about her character save that she wanted to be an artist and was failing. Even though she was the main character, she actually seemed to be the least interesting character within the book itself.

Overall, the possibility of something great is here, but it reminds me of something I heard long ago- a bad plot can survive good characters, but a good plot can be destroyed by bad characters.

So, I am VERY particular about my science fiction books. I am not a fan of alien sci-fi (don't believe in aliens, cannot suspend disbelief) or time travel/wormhole sci-fi (ditto). I prefer mindf*ck sci-fi like Twilight Zone / Black Mirror about totally alternate and preferably bizarre universes, Oh, and I especially love books with feminist themes. So as you can see my tastes are very particular, and yet I am happy to report that this book checks all the boxes of my requirements. This is a very smart and creative futuristic novel about a man-made virus intended to kill terrorists that ended up killing all men instead. In this future world (sometime in the 2090s), the world is populated by only women, is very peaceful, and has many awesome female-led inventions, like magnetic printed clothing, artificial intelligence that can tell you what kind of life choice is most likely to make you happy.

In this book, a debate arises as to whether men should be brought back to the world. Author Boostrom (who is a man, by the way!) provides some pretty compelling modern-day data about why maybe they should not be reintroduced when their propensity for killing and destroying things has been largely eradicated from the world. But of course, despite their peace and happiness under the Founding Mothers, many women (known as "Lonelyhearts") miss men. At the center of this choice is our heroine Athena who has for some reason been summoned by the world's highest female AI ruler to participate.

This is an extremely creative, commendably smart and interesting text that is very well-narrated. I loved the narrator's voice, and the voices of all the characters are distinctive. This book is very well-acted. The characters were well-drawn by the author as well. I felt the book at times got a little bogged down in describing the sci-fi technological and futuristic details, and got a little bored during those parts, but again, that may be because I'm not your typical everyday sci-fi reader. I'm also not sure how I feel about the ending of the book, although the author's epilogue helped somewhat. But overall, I really liked listening to this. Everything from the plot, to the ingenious inventions, to the narrator's soothing voice made for a great audiobook experience. I liked this a lot, and if you love all sci-fi, you'll probably love it. I think this author is tremendously promising and I am definitely going to read whatever he comes up with next (unless there are aliens in it, of course - sorry, aliens).

Thanks to Adam Boostrom, NetGalley, and Macmillan Audio for the advance copy of this really thought-provoking and original audiobook. My opinions are honest and my own.

Athena’s Choice was so much better in theory than in actuality. The story was very interesting and I definitely enjoyed the concept, but my big issue with the book is that I didn’t feel any character connection whatsoever. When I was writing down review notes while listening, I struggled to remember the names of any of the characters — including Athena, who’s name is actually in the TITLE. I find it very hard to enjoy a book throughly when I don’t connect with the characters. Her motive for helping to find out who stole the genome didn’t make much sense, other than her wanting to be special. This didn’t really make me sympathetic to her. Her limited relationships weren’t flushed out super well either, so I couldn’t even sympathize with her in relation to caring about her personal collections. I’m still giving it three stars because I REALLY loved the plot concept. I just feel like it could have been so much better. Especially because it’s sort of like a mystery sci-fi and I could have had so much fun sleuthing if I cared about the characters. I especially liked the author’s note at the end on how this book relates to reality — it adds a certain oomph to the work.

It was just ok for me..trying to find out how to bring back men. Had some interesting parts along the way but i felt like it was dragging at certain parts. I really liked how the future world was depicted.

The story was a little intense knowing that right now we are living in a pandemic and this book narrates the story after a pandemic that ended with a big amount of the world’s population. Nevertheless the story felt a little flat and the characters were not relatable. The entire story felt secondary to the past, meaning it would have been better how they change based on the pandemic and not how they wanted to go back. In general I liked it and the audiobook was nice to listen to and the voice of the narrator was calm and versatil to create the idea of many female characters.

DNF at 60%

“A woman,” Nomi loved to say, “needs a man as much as a fish needs a bicycle.”

NOTE: I mark as read the books that I reach more than 50%, if it is less, I do not mark them as read.

I thought Into the Water was second to none, but no. One worse arrived than I could EVEN finish. Athena’s choice is simple, flat, where things happen just because. A nonsensical book that I regret having read.

In Athena's choice we meet Athena, a high school girl who lives in a future in which a virus killed EVERY man on the planet, and women had to set their standards, create the ways to That the world could work. Now, there is the possibility of bringing the men back, but at the same time, from the government laboratory (I think) the genome of the virus is stolen, which can be altered to be deadly for the entire population.

As you can see, it looks VERY interesting. A utopia tinged with feminism in a futuristic world with crime involved and political intrigue. But the book, apart from being VERY SLOW, is exasperating. Athena's character is 1. Unbearable. 2. She is VERY lucky and everything happens to her because she is pretty, I guess, because there is no reason for anything that happens to her. I couldn't bear it inside the book. The other characters are SO irrelevant that we don't even know them well.

Does anyone want to explain to me why she is involved in the robbery? Why is she accused? Why then do you start helping with the investigation? There's no answer? It is because there is no reason. The police said, "Oh, she looks very smart, help us save the world (Literally)." And, my biggest complaint, why put ALL THE HOPES OF THE WORLD in a random dream of a girl? Really?

And to continue, it seems to me a sexist book full of harmful prejudices. First: The book says that women can ONLY do great things WITHOUT men, when that's a lie. Second: It stigmatizes men, saying that ALL men are harmful, toxic and dangerous, and do you know why it bothers me? Because I am a man and it would never occur to me to kidnap a girl (Example given in the book). I think we are in an age where stereotypes, sideways, must be completely abolished. Third: Although women have lived a long time without men, they have a lot of internalized misogyny.

In general, I can't (and don't want to) give spoilers, as I just want to say: Don't read Athena’s choice. My opinion ends here, because I do not want to elaborate further. This book seems sexist and full of stereotypes and internalized misogyny and I hope that this type of book, one day, will end.

MontFort says bye.

☆゜・。。・゜゜・。。・゜★

Thanks to NetGalley for a copy of this for review.

I’ll be honest, this was kind of a disappointing book for me. It was a book that could have been really interesting, had a really interesting concept, but just wasn’t achieved as it could have been.

My biggest issue with this book, which is frustrating of me and something that couldn’t have been changed, was the fact it was a book about women and women only, but was written by a man. The female narrator lives in a world where men no longer exists but she wishes they did - it’s as if the male author was reminding women of men’s importance in the world. The narrator didn’t simply want men, she wanted their “rough” and “forceful” affections, as if men are only capable of inflicting pain/power - and that women crave it or are driven to want it.
"She craved for the [male drawings] to come to life and crave her in return. She fantasised about the power her feminine body would have over them, about what a rush it would be to see those men unable to take their eyes off of her... She longed for them to pull her forcefully into their strong embrace"
I think there were a lot of things that were interesting in this and one of them was the fact that only women existed in this world. The virus that wiped men was recent enough that women remembered a world with men - it wasn't all daydreams and fantasing about what men could be like, there were women that were hurt by men in living memory, as well as women who miss brothers and husbands.
I did like the mix of narrative and other things (like Wikipedia articles, news reports, school flashbacks). They effectively added to and built on what was being spoken about in the present narrative.
I also liked the end. Well, the final chapter; (what happened in the last few chapters and how the story concluded, I honestly can't remember). It was intriguing and worked well for the book. Whilst (somewhat) frustrating, it allows the reader to become part of the story and reflect on what they would do in the situation.
However, I didn't remember any characters really, beyond each interaction (if they came back or were mentioned later, the impact passed over my head because I couldn't remember who they were). Athena focused a lot on appearances, taking time to identify everyone's height, eye colour, age, before trying to figure out anything about them. She even spent about a page in front of the mirror early on in the book, describing her own *beautiful* appearance.

Unfortunately, I was bothered by the male-author-writing-lots-of-women part early on and never seemed to move past it. I really wanted to, especially given how much everyone else seemed to love it. However, this feeling, coupled with Athena's lengthy self-description and then the following description of a sandwich (who describes a sandwich like you would a lover?) just meant I never quite got into the story:
"...a turkey croissant sandwich, covered with cucumber and tomato. The moist slices of thinly printed turkey practically melted on contact with her tongue."

CW: Rape/Sexual assault/Suicide/Death

Thank you, NetGalley, for accepting my request and allowing me to read this book and listen to the audiobook in return for an honest review.
I wasn’t a fan of this book despite being excited. I feel it would maybe translate better as a TV show vs a book. I didn’t like the writing style too much and there was very little character development. Also, it dragged on it felt and the ending concluded kind of cheesy.

The narrator was pretty good. Sometimes she said words very strangely but she did a good job using different voices.

*received for free from netgalley for honest review* Yea idk how much I really liked this book, like it wasn't bad but there was just some uh weird stuff in it?

I really enjoyed this book. And eventho I’m a scientist myself (specialised in genomics) I wasn’t mad about the scientific aspects of this book. The author had obviously taken the time out to do his research. I really enjoyed the book but I really wish it didn’t end me questioning what did she decide to do. Hate cliff hangers. But love the book.

I loved everything about this book! I was looking for something unique and with a dystopian/sci-fi vibe. This definitely fit the bill. I will be looking forward to other titles by this author because I enjoyed this one very much!

I don't read much in this genre just the premise intrigued me. I very much enjoyed listening to it. The story was compelling and imaginative, drawing on recognizable present day elements as they might exist in the future. I kept reminding myself that the author is a man - that helped keep the main theme of the "choice" in more tension. This was both entertaining and thought provoking. Good narration!

I received a free audio copy of the book from @NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I really wanted to like the book, but unfortunately it just fell short for me.

The book talks about a utopian/dystopian (you decide) future society where males have been eradicated from the planet and all females live in harmony and all the worlds issues have been resolved. Why were men eradicated? Because they are evil, violent, rapists always looking for something to destroy or stand-out. I had a problem with limping the entire male species as evil, but I was willing to let it go to see where the book went.

It got worse from there...especially the last couple of chapters.

The book felt shallow, there was no depth to the characters or their relationships.

At first I thought this was a YA book, but it’s classified as Sci-Fi/Women’s Fiction. From either viewpoint I would not recommend this book.

The premise of Athena's Choice is exactly the kind of idea that always draws me to speculative fiction. No men in society, you say? World hunger is solved? Violent crime is a distant memory? I absolutely need to read this book.

But once I got into the meat of it, I discovered it was all over the place. I couldn't get a good grip on what was really happening, and things were so less than believable, I started to develop my own ideas and they diverged greatly from where the novel was heading. I think it was the supernatural, let's "speak to her through her dreams" thing that kind of lost me. I wanted something much more scientific and truly speculative, instead of jumping off the deep end into a hot mess of contradictions, almost mystical government, and unexplained technological advances.

There was so much more in-depth exploration that could have been done into the groups of women who missed men, the other groups of women who were scared to bring them back, the people who had no idea what was even going on behind the scenes, the government control, and all the technology that made it possible for humanity to continue without its sperm donors. Instead we follow one young woman who magically ends up being named as someone important who figures out some important stuff. It really fizzled when it could have been something substantial, had more attention been given to the world-building and the science of it all, instead of following a simplistic plot driven by dreams and strange ambition.

It could have been so much more.

This book has such an interesting concept that I was instantly intrigued to pick it up and read it, but there were a few too many issues I had with it.

Firstly, I would like to say that the world built here was amazing, the best part of this book. Most of the world-building is done through articles at the ends of chapters and they were so interesting and allowed us to see so much more of the world than the more narrative parts. If I was just rating those bits this book would get a 4.5/5 stars.

But unfortunately those weren't the only part of the book. The main narrative line follows a woman named Athena figuring out more information about how men stopped being in the world and what's going to happen to bring them back (sorta?).
I have a lot of issues with is so I'm going to bullet most of them here for you:
This book was pitched to me as a thriller, it's not. It is 100% a sci-fi, and read very much as a YA sci-fi.
There was a line in the book about including transmen and some woman in the people who were killed, but to me it read much more as a throw away line to try and be more inclusive. I wish we could have learned more about that, maybe not going into detail about everything but more than one sentence would have been nice.
Also the writing felt very weak. Many times things were over described, which is a technique in thrillers, but it wasn't done in a good way. Instead of saying a character has blue eyes, they were royal blue eyes. There was so much focus on how people looked in the book, and none of it felt necessary (something that seems to happen a lot in ya books).
One of the characters is described as having "ancient wisdom" and then acts like a spoiled brat/child the rest of the book, so I'm really not sure what that was about.
There were also a major focus on religious imagery and symbolism (down to someone being named Eve).
I also felt like it had appropriation of indigenous/Native North American culture (I am not the best judge of this and would suggest looking at a review of an indigenous person for a better understanding of the problem).

I think many people will have a problem with the open-ended ending, but i personally like that style, so be warned if you don't want a definite decision made, don't read this book!

Thanks to Netgalley for offering a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Story started out very interesting, then it started leaning toward the mysterious religion that the men followed.
The main character becomes obsessed with finding more about the religion.
She is brought to talk with the main "siri" robot, who will not tell her why she is there, she has to figure that out for herself. The story is hard to follow, it drags a bit. Was not into it.

This book was such a surprise for me. I was intrigued by the description and cover, but wow! I got so much more than I expected!

The characters in this story are so well developed and interesting. The story line is fast moving and engaging.

As a fan of dystopian fantasy novels, I was not disappointed.

I loved the narration and the theme of this story. I look forward to future books by this author.

I received a free copy of this audio book in exchange for my honest review from NetGalley and the publisher.

I want to start by saying I absolutely loved the narrator for this title! Her voice was very engaging and kept me riveted throughout.

Next: the storyline, of course.
Athena lives in a world with so many technological advances compared to what we know now: helicars, massage implants that can be programmed at will, screens in our contacts that one can control with a tap, and clothing printers that will make you a new outfit every day! There's just one thing missing from the world as Athena knows it: men. There have been no men at all for many years, ever since a pandemic with mysterious origins that killed off all the men on the planet, almost exclusively.

There's been work in progress on creating a male genome that would bring men back without continuing to be susceptible to the disease... until the genome is mysteriously stolen, and the world's greatest AI informs public safety that Athena is the only one who can help get it back.

The storyline was wonderful, the narrator was wonderful, and I loved the peeks at memories and newspaper clippings from Athena's past that helped piece together the story as it goes along! I found this book really thought provoking as well... what would Earth be like without one or the other gender? It's crazy to think about! Definitely recommend this read.

I want to thank NetGalley, the publisher, and author Adam Boostrom for providing me with an ARC audiobook of Athena's Choice!

I am super hesitant about science fiction, but wow! I am glad I took the chance on this one. The world building within this novel is just gorgeous; so much time, effort, and attention to detail was put into this. The writing style was so easy to follow along with and the characters really made this story what it was. I'm also all about a world without men (lol, kidding, kidding). Overall, an awesome read (or listen!)

Thank you again for the opportunity to listen to and review this ARC audiobook!