I wasn’t sure what to expect but was pleasantly surprised when it turned out the be the Wild West version of Handmaid’s Tale. This is a very intriguing story. Thanks for the feedback.

This historical novel promises an intriguing premise but ultimately fails to deliver on its potential. Set in an alternate version of the American West where barren women are deemed witches, the plot follows Ada, a young woman who joins a group of outlaws in search of refuge and purpose. However, the narrative lacks cohesion, with the pacing feeling disjointed and erratic. Scenes drag on without significant development, while others rush through crucial moments, leaving readers feeling disconnected from the story's progression. Additionally, I don't feel it handles the topics of gender, sexuality, and race well.

North's writing style also leaves much to be desired, as the novel suffers from a lack of depth and emotional resonance. The prose often feels flat and uninspired, failing to evoke the sense of urgency or intrigue that the plot demands. While the concept of a feminist western is ripe with potential, North's execution falls short, resulting in a narrative that feels underwhelming and forgettable. Overall, "Outlawed" struggles to engage readers due to its sluggish pacing, lackluster writing, and inability to fully realize its intriguing premise.

I wouldn't say I'm generally a "Western" fan, but if you involve women, especially queer women, I'm going to pay attention. Though the protagonist is a straight white woman, she at least has the good sense to pay attention to those around her who are different, and her naiveté becomes more a thing of the past. Set in a somewhat alternate western U.S., much parallels our present day struggles.

I wanted to like this book but the concept just didn’t interest me. The western theme and old time writing didn’t keep my attention.

Excellent book! It is an alternate time line,. What if women were persecuted even more than they actually were? What if they were imprisoned for not producing children? What if a woman's only worth was in giving birth?
What happens is that women form their own world and do what it takes to survive.
I would recommend this book to anyone who likes the Handmaid's Tale.

What a disappointment. I was intrigued by the premise and generally like Western novels, but this fell painfully flat. It was generally well-written (the prose was good) but the pacing was atrocious and the characters poorly developed.

I was super excited to read this one. Picked up my digital ARC and thought I was going to read it all in one sitting, but as the book approached its climax, I lost interest in the plot. I never finished it.

I saw it again at the library the other day and picked it up expecting to finish it quickly. Long story short, I only finished it because it was overdue. I don't remember ever being so disinterested in a bank robbery or the "action-packed" pursuit of the culprits.

The premise of this book a very original and unique, but for all its originality, I couldn't actually get into the storytelling. I felt detached from it, like reading a book that you can analyze in an academic way but you don't really get into the plot.

Outlawed is a historical fiction novel set in the American West during the 1890s. The story follows Ada, a young woman who is forced to go on the run after she is caught with another woman. Ada is determined to find a place where she can be free to love who she loves, but she soon finds that the world is not as accepting as she had hoped.

North does a masterful job of creating a vivid and atmospheric setting for her story. The West of the 1890s was a dangerous and unforgiving place, and North captures this perfectly. Ada is a strong and independent protagonist, and I found myself rooting for her throughout the story.

One of the things that I really appreciated about Outlawed is the way that North handles the LGBTQ+ representation. Ada's relationship with another woman is not treated as a taboo or something to be ashamed of. Instead, it is simply a part of who she is. This was refreshing to see.

Outlawed is a beautifully written and powerful novel that will stay with you long after you finish reading it. It is a must-read for anyone who is a fan of historical fiction or LGBTQ+ literature.

Here are some specific things that I loved about the book:

- The characters were well-developed and relatable. I found myself rooting for Ada and her friends, and I felt their pain and joy as if it were my own.
- The writing was beautiful and lyrical. North's words painted such a vivid picture of Ada's world, and I felt like I was right there with her on her journey.
- The themes of love, loss, and survival were explored in a nuanced and sensitive way. I learned a lot about myself and my own relationships while reading this book.
- The LGBTQ+ representation was handled in a sensitive and respectful way.
- The ending was both heartwarming and hopeful. I felt like I had been on a journey with Ada, and I was so happy to see her find her way.

Overall, I absolutely loved Outlawed. It is a beautiful, powerful, and insightful novel that I would highly recommend to anyone.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me an advanced copy of this book to read and review.

I really really wanted to enjoy this book. The synopsis hooked me and once I started reading it went down hill. I love historical fiction but this is my first Western and Westerns are just not for me.

In the year of our Lord 1894, I became an outlaw.

This has got to be the best opening sentence I've read for a long while. I really enjoyed this book although it was not exactly what I expected. I'm a fan of the western genre. Give me a Johnstone title and I'm happy. While this had a western flavor to it, I'd not list it as a western, more of a historical fiction. An original plot followed by an original character to tell us her own story in her own words.

In the 1880's and 90's, a girl child's life plan was set at birth. Her life would follow the guidelines set by society, or else. So when Ada reached 17 yrs of age, she was married. It was expected that a baby would follow every year until she was no longer of child bearing age. After a year of marriage and no baby, Ada's life plan.....not to mention her life.....was in danger. Drawing a clear line between her life before and after, Ada became an outlaw.

The story grows from there, taking readers on an unusual journey through Ada's experiences and how her days as an outlaw helped change some of the most basic tenets of a woman's life at the end of the 19th century. This was an enjoyable change from the mystery/thrillers I've been reading.

I read this book first, as a member of NetGalley, this author being the first to grant me access to her writing. I want to thank the author, Anna North, fist, for allowing me to have the privilege to do this and then, for a great story, one that is a must read for dystopian fans.

North creates a fantasy world that could be one that we can relate to, especially because of the struggles we see with women and the rights she has to her body and control over it (or, more likely, the rights others are in the process of taking away), right now in the United States. Here, in North's world, we see what happens when a society goes overboard, when bearing a child is the most important thing for a society because of the inability to populate (as it is here).

If a woman can't have a child she is persecuted. She may end up losing her life, as she knows it. Whether she is put out of her home, her family, all she ever knew or sent to a church, cast aside. In the end, the latter is probably her better bet, if she wants to stay alive. It is thought here, the infertile cast witch like curses and cause all the ill on others so their best bet, even if they want to live, is find another life, elsewhere, however hard that may be.

And North's character, Anna does just that. She finds a rag tag bunch of women and they set out like cowboys trying, illegally most of the time, to find a place in life, a good life where they are accepted and happy. But, trying to make others accept you, whatever you do, is hard. And, in the end, people who try to force acceptance are made to accept their own situation themselves, make a life however best they can, and live with what is, however imperfect that may seem.

A self taught main character, a maternally taught midwife, (in this world, a doctor, by definition, here) furthers her education along the way, her journey of acceptance, searching for why she is infertile in hopes of a cure for herself and others. When a group of like-minded individuals, all that way because they are outcasts, whether they can bare no children, they are together because society has turned against them, for one reason or another, and they set out to change the world.

It is a story of hope and perseverance, in a world where ideas like that seem lost, in a world full of ignorance and where many voices are no longer heard. A story in which a woman finds another, bond together, and despite disagreements, even with the knowledge, knowing their plans may fail, continue on because it is all they have, all they have is one another, move forward. All this in a world where nothing but these women are moving forward.

North is an author who, once you read, you're going to read again, once she puts up something new. So, a must-read as an author, as a whole, with the works she puts out. Thanks again for the preview!

I don’t know how historically accurate this is, since a lot of it feels made up or exaggerated, but it’s a very good commentary on the issues plaguing women in today’s world. In the society we see in this book, people basically exist to get pregnant and have as many children as possible, and women who don’t get pregnant get kicked out of their houses, no one wants to marry someone who is an only child or has siblings with disabilities, and there’s a lot of racist rhetoric thrown around about how interracial couples can’t produce children or something. There’s even an instance where we encounter a man who was in love with another man who *gasp* stops sleeping with his wife, and thusly the man incurs a punishment for “interfering in the conceiving of children”.
It makes you wonder why there’s such an emphasis on having children, when the children would just grow up to have to deal with the same. It’s a lot like what goes on in the US right now, with people being pressured to have children they didn’t intend to, only for those children to grow up in a society that just makes them face more issues.
This book was very gripping from start to finish, and it a quick read, but, again, it almost seemed too exaggerated to be as historically accurate as I would have thought, and read more like a dystopian book than historical fiction, and that took me out of the story at times.

Loved this take on Billy the Kid!!! Told from a female perspective, Outlawed is about how history would have been different if Billy the Kid and his gang were actually a gang of women from different walks of life. Anna North is a genius to write a believable tale that has strong female characters and about how we women need to stand up for each other instead of tearing each other down. Female friendship at its finest!

Real Rating: 3.5* of five, rounded up because there's more there there than in many more deftly plotted books

Imaginative, inventive, and insolent prose telling the oft-told tale of good soul gone bad. It's not a new trope or even take...woman blamed for problems she can't control, runs away, lives her best life...but it's very well crafted and quite fun to read.
<blockquote>“The point is, you live like I did, you start being able to spot what makes some people sink and other people swim. There’s a quality, I don’t even know how to describe it—sometimes it looks like luck and sometimes it looks like skill and sometimes it doesn’t look like either one. But you have it, I saw it when I met you. You’ve made a lot of mistakes, but you’re a good bet. You’ll swim.”
&ndash;and&ndash;
“If they take you, keep your head up. Don't beg for your life. Don't confess to any sin. If you die without shame, the shame is all theirs.”</blockquote>
These women, cast out for failing to give birth, find their world is much bigger and much sweeter when they embrace freedom from expectations. Deeply, deeply relatable to this old queer gent.

Outlawed by Anna North

Thank you to both NetGalley and the publishers for an Arc copy in exchange for an honest review.

First off the author can write well that's not in question. I have mixed feelings about this novel. While I can't say I hated it, I also can't say I loved it. I do not understand all the rave reviews as well. I'll get to the rest of the book shortly, I do have a pet peeve and that this novel had lgbtq tag in the Genre listing it is a misnomer. There is one scene in the book when the main character, Ada, is dropped off at the site of the Hole in the Wall gang and she sees two people engaged in an intimate embrace. She assumes it is a man and woman but later finds out it was two women. That's it. That"s all she wrote about any lesbian interaction so It bugs me as a lesbian woman that it was labeled as such.
Ok, on to the rest of the book. Ada is a woman who after more than a year of marriage has not become pregnant and it is declared that she is barren and possibly a witch. This takes place in the late 1800's so obviously during these times they don't know there are numerous reasons she hasn't gotten pregnant including that it could have something to do with her husband. So she gets shipped (not an actual ship) off to a convent that is full of women assumed to be barren. She is unhappy there and is told her only other option is to join the outlawed gang of supposed barren women called the Hole in the Wall gang. While reading it I kept wondering why it got such rave reviews, at least from the critics. Again, it was not terrible and the author can write. It's just that at the end of the book I'm just feeling like why did I spend all these hours reading it. I didn't love the characters or felt like they went through a great adventure that I experienced with them and I didn't have this happy feeling or moving feeling that I'm looking for when I finish a book. The greatest complement I can give a book is to say I'm already looking forward to reading it again and with this book, once I finish this sentence and post this review I won't think about this book again. I might give this author a chance with another title if it appeals to me and that I the best thing I can say.

Ada leaves her town after a year of marriage with no pregnancy. At the time, barren women are hanged as witches and Ada's life depends on disappearing. She meets up with the Hole in the Wall Gang who are trying to create a safe haven to women like her. However, she must risk her life to help create that safe haven.

I was very intrigued when reading the synopsis of this book. Learning about the history of how much control men had over women's bodies at that time was difficult to read but I think it's an important topic. It had a lot of potential but in the end I just felt bored. I think the action in the book could have been a little more exciting and were skimmed over and felt rushed.

I wanted to love Outlawed by Anna North. I really wanted to love it. It was supposed to be a book with some feminism, exploration of nonbinary identities, etc. A perfect sounding book for anyone on the more liberal side of the current political fences. However, I could not love this book. I finished it, and instead of feeling satisfied, I felt as though I'd just made a meal of an old fashioned Hostess Twinkie. The book was lacking in much of the substance that would make it easy to be loved. I never felt that I connected fully with any of the characters, as they all felt like paper dolls used to prop up a story that was lackadaisical and where no one took any effective action much of the time. The central character of the story was poorly developed and completely cishet. The nonbinary, gay, lesbian, or questioning characters didn't seem all that invested in their own identities, preferring to just party on around the camp fire and pull off the occasional robbery. Really they only served as a backdrop to the main character and they were very two dimensional and not that interesting at all. So much more could have been done in this novel, and yet.... The story line itself zigged and zagged and seemed unsure of where it wanted to go too. Overall, the book came across as strictly performative. The tag lines about gender issues and feminism were mainly just that. Taglines. I wish I could rate Outlawed highly, and yet it was so empty and unnourishing, that I have to rate it as I would McDonald's. A 2. I'd read another like it if I were that hungry for words and had no others available to me. Otherwise, it's something I'd avoid.

This is basically Handmaid’s Tale as a Western.

Which is fine I suppose, except it’s not really a new concept overall and the book is more depressing than anything.

The story starts out in a fairly intriguing manner, with protagonist Ada fleeing her town to avoid being hanged for a witch essentially because she’s probably barren.

She eventually joins up with a gang of female outlaws, which turns out to be a lot less fun and a lot more depressing to read about than it sounds. I guess this is ok (it’s not like this is a poorly-written story), but the tone doesn’t exactly match that of the publishers summary, which leads the reader to believe that of tragic circumstances will come a rip roarin’ adventure. Sadly, what mostly comes is a lot of gross maiming and injuries and death and very little excitement.

I suppose this is probably the realistic outcome of such a setup, but again, not as advertised and not something I would have pursued if the book’s description had been accurate.

You do feel for the characters (most of whom are likable), though all of said likable folks suffer tremendously, some of them die horribly, and they don’t get much resolution in the end.

In all, this wasn’t a bad concept, but it needed-above all-to be advertised to readers in a more accurate manner, and it probably needed either more hope and plot resolution or far stronger character development.