Poster Girl takes place somewhere in the future after civilization as we know it has fallen. Sonya was the beautiful girl on the propaganda poster for the previous government— but now she’s imprisoned and the only way she can secure her freedom is to find another missing girl.

I really enjoyed this dystopian mystery. It is a definite page turner, and it’s interesting to contemplate the similarities between this fictional future and our own society.

Thank you to NetGalley, author Veronica Roth, and publisher William Morrow for providing me with a free ARC in exchange for my honest opinion!

I was in middle school and high school at the peak of the teen dystopian novel craze, meaning that I was OBSESSED with the Divergent series by Veronica Roth. I had strong feelings about the last installment in the series, but the Divergent and Insurgent were even better to me than The Hunger Games. Getting approved for Veronica Roth's newest book, this time an adult dystopian novel, felt very full circle for me. I actually haven't read a dystopian novel since high school, so it was fun to return to that sort of atmosphere. Roth definitely knows her genre, as Poster Girl was just as well-written as her other books. The world building is great, and I found myself intrigued by Sonya throughout the whole story. It is hard to know who to root for in this book until all is revealed at the end. My biggest complaint is that I wish Roth would have taken her time with this and made it into a series rather than stand-alone. The world the book is set in felt underdeveloped and confusing at times; the reader isn't always given full context to the world the characters used to live in or the world they are currently in. There were lots of interesting critiques on technology and government, yet I wanted to know more about how these things were intersecting. I wanted to know more about Sonya's background, as well as I would have liked to see more about her beyond an epilogue. There are also several secondary characters that are not explained well, such as David, and some of the reveals were a bit lack-luster for me personally because I couldn't remember what or who it was referring to, since it wasn't mentioned but fleetingly. I did have a good time reading this book, and it felt in lots of ways like returning to an old friend; however, the rushed aspect of trying to world build and tell a complete dystopian story in a single 288-page novel made me miss the days when dystopian trilogies were all the rage.

I enjoyed this book! I’ve been a fan of Veronica Roth for a while, so it was nice to read another piece of work from her. I enjoyed the world-building and the plot of this book. The story and characters were well-written and kept me engaged.

Veronica Roth definitely has a knack for creating dystopian worlds. I found the world building for this one incredibly intriguing and would have like so so so much more depth on it. I had to settle for the glimpses the story gave however. The story itself felt a bit too light sadly even though I appreciate the questions it raised.

Thank you William Morrow for the ARC!

Veronica Roth delivers a future dystopian home run in Poster Girl. This adult novel takes place in the post-apocalyptic city of Seattle where the leaders of a manipulative, greed-driven surveillance state, The Delegation, have been overthrown in a revolution. The Delegation used a device called The Insight, inserted into a newborn’s eye at birth, to set up a constant surveillance state based on all the visual feeds.

All the participants of this corrupt leadership, as well as their children, have been locked away into a ghetto apartment complex called the Aperture as punishment, including Sonya the only surviving daughter of a leadership family. Life in the aperture is bleak, with too little food, fights over scraps of leftover clothing and appliance parts, and no relief in sight. Sonya’s face is known by all the city’s residents as her parents had her pose for the ultimate Delegation patriotic poster as a young teen. The Insights on all the Aperture prisoners remain active and have now become a control monitor by the Triumvirate – as contrasted to the devices supposedly having been removed for the general populace.

In the decade since assuming control of the city, the new regime, the Tirumvirate, has let the city devolve into decay. Moreover, the Triumvirate leadership has come to Sonya to engage her help in finding a child who the Delegation removed from her home to give to more deserving Delegation leaders. The reward if successful: Sonya’s release from the aperture.

In the detective work that follows, Sonya starts deeply and critically evaluating the Delegation as well as her parents’ complicity in it. Alongside her, you’re drawn into thinking the reach of tech surveillance in our own lives through our devices, social media, street cameras and connected devices such as Alexa or The Nest many of us have in their homes.

A great detective story, wrapped around the best of dystopia in changing perspectives on our current world and the potentially hazardous trajectory we’re on.

Thanks to William Morrow and Netgalley for an advanced reader’s copy.

Just what I wanted from Veronica Roth. I loved the Chosen Ones and this one hit just as hard! Loved how complex and well developed the characters were. Every chapter draws you in more and more.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advance reader copy of this book. Roth and her dystopian stories are always very intriguing. This is a super fast read and I enjoyed the story and it's twists and turns.

This took me a little while to get into, but that is not unusual for a book that involves some “world-building.” Our main character, Sonya, was once literally a poster girl for the Delegation, and her dad worked for the government. After that regime was toppled, many people who worked for them were killed or put into the Aperture.

This space consists of four apartment buildings and two streets that cross each other in the middle. The people there only get deliveries of groceries and donated items monthly, so everything is pretty scarce inside. There is a guard who controls the entrance, but otherwise the inhabitants are left to police themselves.

This is where we find Sonya, the only one left of her family. She was only a teen when the Delegation fell. A new law on the outside is allowing people who were kids when put into the Aperture to be released, as they were (assumed to be) not responsible for the decisions of their parents. Sonya is just past the cut-off birth date, though, and early on in the book she becomes the youngest person inside. She mostly spends her time with older folks – widows and widowers – and considers herself one of them. Everyone inside has lost people.

She is offered a chance to earn her freedom by finding a missing girl. She is given 12 hours outside the Aperture every day to conduct her investigation. She is given no budget, but thankfully there is free public transportation. One hindrance she constantly battles is that she is recognized everywhere.

One of the debates raging in the outside world is the use of technology, and whether or not there should be limits on what is used and how. Sonya is led to Emily Knox, an infamous hacker, to see if she has any data that would help find the missing girl. A lot of the back half of the book is spent in this world – with hackers, tech, and anti-tech extremists. There is a lot of action, and a few deaths. During this time, Sonya is also learning more about the inner workings of the Delegation, the roles of her dad and her family friends within the Delegation, and the new government. This section kind of had a “Jason Bourne” vibe to me, with her constantly learning what she didn’t know.

I’m not going to give away the ending, but Sonya does find out what happened to the missing girl. She also grows a little more assertive during this whole ordeal, and uses her newfound knowledge to get what she wants in the end.

Sonya Kantor was a poster girl for the government entity, the Delegation. Years have passed since the Delegation has fallen out of power and Delegation enthusiasts, government agents and supporters have been sectioned off into series of city blocks blocked off from the rest of society. When she is faced with a task that could mean her freedom, she enters back into the world and discovers her beliefs and faith in the old system are called into question.

There is something about Roth's writing that always draws me in. She does a wonderful job of revealing information through the entirety of the book so you are always learning something new about the characters, the world and the story. Poster Girl has some wonderful twists and turns as well as a little bit of romance. The real bulk of this story is the mystery. This overlays the extent of the book. There are some really deep themes as well. It is a dystopian novel after all. Sonya shows a lot of growth through the book. She questions what she believes and becomes very self aware.

Overall, I really liked Poster Girl, and not just because the main character shares my first name. Though I will say that was a fun surprise. The story is solid and the unraveling of details keeps the story moving. It is a fast read and one I would recommend.

I just can’t get into this book, so unfortunately I Had to DNF. I just couldn’t get into the dystopian setting, and it read a little too young for me.

The Aperture is a prison in the outskirts of the city, it housed and locked in the valuable members of the Delegation. The Delegation was once a powerful dystopian regime that fell during the oppression. Sonya Kantor was the daughter of the former head of the Committee of Order for the Delegation, who also was the face of the once famous propaganda poster, is imprisoned for ten years in the Aperture. She became accustomed to the life of having nothing and having no one when enemies of the past came back knocking and offering a trade. This time, they wanted her to find the missing girl that was taken away from her parents during the Delegation’s regime in exchange of her freedom. This mission will lead Sonya to some ugly truth she wished she never knew.

I love how good the writing is for this book. Veronica Roth has the talent for making dystopian setting somewhat appealing despite ugliness of it in general. She has the way of making the readers sit back and think of what this book bring to our present situation. Some review says, that The Poster Girl is not as deep and her previous work and I can see why they may think that way. But to me, if one internalize deeply on how modern technology seem to have all the control of every citizen’s businesses and privacies, I say, it is hitting right at home. How scary if this in fact mirrors reality and undeniably very compelling. For the dystopian genre- Roth is at the top of her game. For the romance part of the characters… well, there wasn’t anything romantic whatsoever. Overall, still a good reading experience worth the time and effort!

Special thank you to William Morrow via Netgalley for the ARC in exchange of my honest thoughts.

This book was a fantastic dystopian thriller. Although it feels deeper and more of a character study than a thriller. I really loved these characters and these settings. I would like more stories set in this world.

I didn’t love it and didn’t hate it. I was hoping it would pull me in like the Divergent series by this author, but that did not happen. I understand that it’s hard to compete with what has become an iconic series in the dystopian genre, so I am not mad about it. This was an interesting concept, but just did not have enough action for me. I think I needed more world-building or back story maybe. I enjoyed the characters and felt like I would like to see more growth and learn more about them, so that is a plus.

The Delegation has fallen and Sonya has been locked up with the rest of the followers of the oppressive regime. After ten years, she is given a chance to earn her freedom by delving into past secrets.

Read this book if you’re looking for:
•a quick, fun read
•a dystopian novel
•murder

I decided to read this book because I LOVED the Divergent series when I was younger. This felt pretty similar to that series - a dystopian novel geared towards younger audiences. I was expecting a more grown up novel, so I enjoyed reading it but it didn’t blow me away.

I haven’t read a book by Veronica Roth since finishing her debut young adult series, Divergent, way back when, but it’s clear she hasn’t lost her talent for building immersive, bleak dystopias — in fact, she’s even better at it.

Poster Girl, her latest, is a raw, thrilling mystery about the many fascist faces government can wear, as well as the lies we tell ourselves to keep from crumbling under the weight of our own mistakes. It’s heavy stuff, and Roth navigates the moral gray areas throughout with a deft hand.

Our heroine is Sonya Kantor, who has spent the last decade of her life in the Aperture, a prison on the outskirts of the city. Before the fall of the brutal Delegation, the government that controlled the megalopolis in the Seattle-Portland area where Sonya lived with her parents and older sister, Sonya was their literal “poster girl,” with images of her pretty face plastered across the city alongside the slogan “What’s Right, Is Right.” She did whatever she was told. She obeyed the rules of her Insight, an ocular implant that tracked every word and every action, rewarding or punishing according to a rigid moral code set forth by the Delegation. (Remember that Black Mirror episode ‘Nosedive’ starring Bryce Dallas Howard? The society in this book functions a lot like the one there.)

But when a revolution sweeps through the city, she isn’t willing to die for her government like her family. And so she, along with Delegation criminals and their children, are locked away in the Aperture to spend the rest of their days in monotonous squalor. Until a troubled boy from her past — now a handsome and even-more-troubled man — offers her a chance at freedom as long as she aids in a dangerous investigation for the new, Post-Delegation government.

As you can likely tell just from the plot summary, there’s a lot going on here. And as with most dystopian sci-fi, an equally large amount of silly little made-up words to add to your lexicon (don’t even get me started on all the names for this world’s designer drugs that come up). But I loved this novel. There’s something about Roth’s prose, world-building, and dialogue that really clicks for me. I was also fascinated by the fact that she chose to start this story at the point where lesser books would likely be ending — instead of getting caught up in the fire and fury of the revolution that takes down the Delegation, Roth gives us a glimpse into the quiet, gray aftermath of it. And it’s still just as (if not more) compelling, which is how you know it’s good.

In addition to fully fleshing out such a sprawling new world across multiple timelines, there’s also a lot of excellent character work going on here. Sonya is such an interesting, complex narrator — you don’t read her story so much as drown in it. She’s prickly and at times unsympathetic, with a deeply checkered past, but there’s always a solid reason for why she does what she does, good or bad. (And just a friendly FYI for any romance lovers out there: there’s a well-developed/bittersweet enemies-to-lovers situation in here. We love to see it.)

Though I didn’t buy a certain “twist” towards the end — it felt like it came out of nowhere, and didn’t wholly add up for me — and I can see why other reviews have said that Poster Girl doesn’t go deep enough, I think it’s a great, haunting piece of dystopian fiction. Well worth a read.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow & Company for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I crept into this book after being wounded years later still from the Divergent series and taking a dystopian book break the past few years. I was pleasantly surprised how deep this delve into human nature and society. The world building had me continue to turn pages and I’m the end I was left wanting more of this story.

This book a lot of fun, and a brilliant dystopian. I loved the look into dystopian governments being replaced, and what that may look like for those who supported them. Sonya being the MC who was the LITERAL poster child for the delegation, now living in a secluded community. Being offered her freedom in exchange for what feels like an impossible task. Is she willing, or even able to complete this thing? This journey of what she discovers along the way as well... the secrets, and the depth of the lies she held and didn't even fully understand. I also loved how quotable this book is, and relevant this book felt to the times. highly recommend for a slow burn mystery that gives you something that will stick to your brain and make you ask the hard questions.

In a dystopian regime, a woman’s desperate search for a missing girl uncovers the dark secrets in Veronica Roth’s “Poster Girl."

Number One bestselling author, Veronica Roth, returns with another haunting dystopian tale in “Poster Girl.” Set in a future society shaken by governmental upheaval, protagonist Sonya Kantor is imprisoned in the Aperture, a facility for political dissenters of the former regime, the Delegation. Her crime is that over a decade ago, she was the face of the Delegation. Depicted as their teenage “poster girl” on propaganda posters, her likeness was plastered everywhere in the land. Sonya’s family was killed in the uprising, and now she lives a sad, lonely existence inside the Aperture, subsisting on performing odd jobs for the other inmates. Yet, Sonya has a face no one can forget, and a past she cannot escape.
In captivity, Sonya experiences soul-crushing deprivation, and she is resigned to living out her dreary life inside the Aperture. Then one day, Alexander, an old friend who represents the new regime, the Triumvirate, presents her with a proposition. He offers her freedom. To earn her liberty, she must work for the Triumvirate and locate a missing child.
Sonya questions the Triumvirate’s true intentions in sending her on this fool’s errand to find a girl named Grace Ward. The Triumvirate hasn’t been able to locate Grace, and Sonya doubts her ability to succeed in the task. However, she cannot resist the challenge, and embarks on a dangerous journey, full of twists and turns. They give her a daily pass to leave the Aperture, and along the way Sonya past and present collide as she uncovers dark political and family secrets.
Under the regime of the Delegation, they had issued each person an ocular implant, the Insight, which fed them information, music, and entertainment. The Insight also monitored the citizens, enforcing a rigid moral code by rewarding and punishing people based upon their activities. In the Triumvirate, everyone, except the prisoners, has had their Insight dismantled, and Sonya’s implant draws even more attention to her as she navigates a post-Delegation society to solve the puzzle of Grace’s disappearance. Along the way, Sonya encounters notorious criminals, resistance fighters, former friends, and henchmen of the old and new regimes who threaten her life. While each presents a stumbling block to attaining her goal, like chess pieces, they move her closer to capturing the King. But whom can she trust?
Once again, Roth embeds the reader in a future society in ruin; this time it is Seattle. Sonya quickly discovers that the Triumvirate’s widespread corruptions surpass those of the Delegation, and they are feeding their citizens lies, which threaten the freedoms they fought to achieve during the war. “Poster Girl” reminded me of the Who’s anthem, “We Get Fooled Again,” where the new boss is the same as the old boss.
In “Poster Girl,” Roth examines the themes of betrayal, familial relationships, the impact of technology on our daily lives, and the government’s control over our existence, especially the right to procreate and personal choice. Sonya was raised in a world of the one child rule, and interestingly, she and Grace are both second, perhaps illegal, children. There is more to Sonya’s own heritage than she has been told by her parents, and was too young to observe. Will her discoveries shattered her long-held beliefs or reinforce them?
In “Poster Girl,” Roth has created Sonya Kantor as a reluctant, yet strong, hero, and readers will root for her as she encounters the obstacles to her freedom. Her awakening is often profound, and one that will keep the reader on the edge of their seat. In our present political climate, “Poster Girl” will resonate with readers long after the final page. Bravo, Veronica Roth, for another sharp, mesmerizing tale!

A Quartet of questions for Veronica Roth

Can you tell us what inspired you to create your protagonist, Sonya Kantor?
She came together when I thought about her as a guilty person instead of an innocent. A lot of the heroes I’ve written about before were true hero figures. They might have flaws, but they wanted to achieve something good in the world. Sonya’s motivations are hidden from us, and that was what made her interesting to me. She’s untangling something in her mind.
In “Poster Girl,” you shift from the setting of Chicago to Seattle in a time after a government revolution, which results in our hero, Sonya, sentenced into the Aperture. What draws you to write about cities in ruin?
You can only destroy Chicago so many times! The reason I chose Seattle was because of its geography. It’s right up against a national forest, which was crucial to the plot, and every time I pictured a scene, it was raining. Also, I wrote the novel during the pandemic, so I couldn’t travel to Seattle for research as I normally would, so I had to rely on my memory, and I’d been there a few times.

In your novels, the theme of government control over citizens seems pervasive. Why is this a common thread?

I think it’s important to keep an eye on your government and be engaged civically. You should be aware of what the government is doing and what they are capable of doing. Part of this came from the time my husband and I spent in Romania for his various projects. One idea that factored into the writing of “Poster Girl” was when Ceausescu fell, government documents were released to the public and everything was made available. You could find out who had tattled on you, like your neighbors, friends, and family members. The citizens had to find ways to reconcile this after that happened. Some of my wariness with government comes from talking to people in Romania about how their government turned on them, and being aware that can happen. Being vigilant is how we stop it from happening. Also, I wanted to explore the question of how you would find it in your heart to forgive your neighbor for participating in this harmful system. In “Poster Girl,” I’m exploring how do we can work together after a personal upheaval.

I’m a mystery writer and I have a tendency to see mysteries in most novels. But at the heart of “Poster Girl,” the inciting incident is a mystery — Sonya’s search for a missing girl. Can you discuss your experience with this genre?

I have tremendous admiration for people who write mysteries all the time. In “Poster Girl,” Sonya has to find a missing child, so the structure of the book had to be a mystery. I’d never written one before and I found it tremendously challenging, but really fun. In writing a mystery, you have to know more than the reader knows, so you have to be smarter than yourself. You have to figure out the plot before you can write it. It was great fun and I hope to do it again.

From the author of the Divergent series, a compelling and thought-provoking dystopian page turner. This is in the vein of 1984 and Black Mirror.

This story has an intriguing mystery and presents the reader with profound questions about human nature, government control, surveillance and freedom. Furthermore, it explores identity, loss, tragedy, regret and redemption.

I flew through this book and really enjoyed it!! Intelligent world building, multi-layered plot and a mystery that keeps you guessing. Complex and nuanced.

What makes Poster Girl unique is that it focuses on the aftermath of a fascist government collapse, rather than their uprising.

Sonya Kantor is a morally grey main character who was raised under the Delegation and remains deeply indoctrinated after their fall. As she begins to uncover dark secrets and horrifying truths, she struggles with the shocking realization that everything she thought she knew, isn’t at all what it seems.

The romance was a small component. I personally felt indifferent to it and believe that the story would be just as powerful without it.

The themes and overall tone of this story felt heavier and darker than Roth’s previous works (hence why this is being marketed as adult rather than YA). But I think this book is just fine for mature YA readers.

This is a must-read for dystopian fans. If you like George Orwell’s 1984, Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said by Phillip K. Dick or enjoy Black Mirror, this is the book for you!!

Thank you Netgalley and William Morrow for this eARC in exchange for an honest review!!

This is a middle of the road read for me… I really love this author but I felt it was slow moving and could use more world building. Overall a decent read.