Title: Yours For The Taking
Publication date: dec 4 2023

Thank you to Net Galley and St. Martin’s Press for the Ebook copy of this ARC.

I am loving a good dystopian story these days so I ate this up. In this book, due to climate change and a deterioration of the quality of life on Earth, Insides have been built throughout the world. Citizens apply to live Inside and those who are chosen get a life in a city sized “Inside” which I can best describe as a manufactured earth with fresh air. Those who are not selected must do their best to survive on an earth that is becoming uninhabitable. On the Inside located in Brooklyn, a feminist billionaire is calling the shots. She has funded this project with the condition that she is in control. As those living and working on the Inside learn about the realities of the world that they are helping to create they begin to questions the ethics of Jacqueline, the billionaire in charge. But what can they do?

I really enjoyed this book, in part because I can see the terrifying reality of what happens when those with the most money make the decisions that affect everyone. This book takes place over many years and it was interesting to watch the character development and growth. And, as always it’s a terrifying reminder of the way we are going with climate change and the state of our planet. If you enjoy a sci-fi dystopian story, this book is for you.

Yours For the Taking is a captivating story told at a breakneck speed. Gabrielle Korn’s debut work of fiction spans 30 years and features the perspectives of 8 characters from 3 generations as they navigate a planet rendered uninhabitable by climate change.

As a reader new to the speculative fiction genre, I found the scope of Korn’s story and the pacing necessary to tell it in under 350 pages absolutely staggering. The pacing sacrifices slice-of-life narrative details and closer explorations of the characters’ inner worlds in favor of truly capturing the magnitude of how much can change over a short time during our very real climate crisis.

For the most part, I’m grateful this novel took the shape it did. Though I’m captivated by the characters and the world Korn created, I respect that I didn’t NEED 1,000+ pages with them to get her point… though I certainly wouldn’t have minded it.

Put another way: ten years ago, the story in this novel could have been a YA sensation told across 4 novels and (of course) 5 movies. But, ten years ago we never could have dreamed of such an urgent, nuanced exploration of climate justice, told through a queer, feminist, and anti-capitalist lens — and that’s a pretty nice trade-off. 4*.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for providing this e-arc.

Many thanks to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for my gifted copy.

A book about climate change, it sounds so interesting, but yet so boring. Not this book!!! I absolutely loved this one, I couldn't flip the pages fast enough. Went out of my comfort zone to read this one, and I'm so glad I did!

This was a really original take on the cli-fi sub-genre looking at how society reacts to the climate crisis. It raised some interesting questions and imagined a set of solutions (and actors) that prompted considerable reflection. It's a take down of girlboss feminism and climate change denial. The book isn't subtle in its critique, but subtlety is overrated--this book says it all with its full chest.

This book is best enjoyed without overthinking every detail of plausibility in the world it builds. Suspend disbelief and you'll enjoy stepping into the characters' shoes, imagining the life and decisions they're facing.

It’s the year 2050 and not everyone gets into the Inside Project; you have to apply to have a shot at surviving the climate-ravaged places across the planet. When Ava gets in and her girlfriend doesn’t, she has a mixture of emotions and experiences that leave her questioning her decisions and reckoning with the world she’s always known. Tackling themes of feminism, capitalism, queerness, race and gender, this is a remarkably frightening, enlightening and unflinching take on dystopian literature.

Yours for the Taking was a fascinating look at what could happen when our world’s climate collapses and the rich help build shelters. I enjoyed the take on feminism and examining what could happen if one person is in charge of everything. Highly recommend!

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publishers for this Advanced Readers Copy of Yours for the Taking by Gabrielle Korn!

This book was about how climate changes have the planet dying. One solution was proposed. People are Inside or Outside. Inside is how you will survive. The Inside is monitored by the rich people from space. This book will make you think. Would you react the same? This was a great ride and i will want to re-read it because i think every time i will find something to think about. I highly recommend this book. I am unsure how to categorize it but i loved it!

I received a free copy for an unbiased opinion.

Very progressive book (LGBTIA and climate change are front and center) but the characters aren't well written and I didn't love the plot.

So many thoughts about this book! I've read quite a few dystopian/utopian feminist books over the past decade, but they all seem to leave out a piece- it could be race, class, education, or the whole LGBT spectrum. This author seems to have thought of every possible angle of what a feminist utopia could be and then breaks it all down piece by piece. Such a thought provoking read- definitely wish I had read this with a book club.

What really worked for me: the way that even smart, capable, critical-thinking people can get swept along in the face of rhetoric and minor concessions. We see the perilous danger of white feminism and what it could be if allowed to fester. And Korn also did a very good job at pulling people from different backgrounds to show various effects.

However, most things kind of fall apart under close scrutiny. I was constantly bubbling with questions about how religion would factor into the Inside, or how so many smart and educated people (from diverse backgrounds!) didn’t look deeper or rebel at all. We don’t know if there was some kind of system of justice. We don’t know what manufacturing or any other kind of non-food-related production looked like. I think having the limited viewpoints saved Korn from having to explain those things, but it also meant that I personally got wrapped around the axel wondering about them.

The other thing that really got me was the timeline. We kind of do a fast-forward montage of like 25 years, which is a LONG time. We also get the sense that some of our characters would get bored in 20 years (legit can’t fathom how Shelby, a personal assistant, didn’t read her boss’s email even ONCE in twenty years; no way). There’s no way everyone would just be mindlessly going along with things for that long, particularly not if they’re both highly educated and from varying backgrounds. If it was 5 years, yeah okay, but 20 is way too long for absolutely nothing to change or be challenged.

But one more thing I did really like was how Korn played with generation stereotypes; with millennials being the old people and Gen Z being, like, parents of teenagers. The nods to those stereotypes and memes were great.

Is dystopian feminist futures becoming a new subgenre? If you like Naomi Alderman, I'd say you'll probably like this book.

Yours for the Taking is a dystopian novel that focuses primarily on three women (Jacqueline, Olympia, and Eva). Each woman benefits (though in vastly different ways) from the Inside Project. The Inside Project is essentially a large enclosed, self-sustaining living habitat that is meant to hold millions of people. These habitats were a way of saving humanity in the face of brutal climate change. There are several throughout the world, but this novel focuses on the one in North America.

There are several other characters that are important to the story, including the daughters born on the Inside, but I think you get the gist of the story. There are honestly very good points about gender and gender identity. The arguments between Olympia and Jacqueline about gender are honestly well-researched and well thought out. The actual story left me wanting.

Overall, I thought the book was messy and could have used more background on what life Inside was like.

Check my website for the full review!

Thanks St. Martin's Press and Netgalley for the ARC!

Yours for the Taking is set in the future and spans the years 2050-2078. Climate change has devastated the planet which sparks the need for new ideas to save humanity. The “Inside” project is supposed to do just that, but there’s more to it than the public knows. This climate change based story is a good read for dystopian fans and those looking to read stories with a strong cast of women and lgbt+ characters.

I had high hopes for this book, but it didn’t quite reach them. The premise of this book is interesting and I did enjoy the story for the most part, but there were several moments that would have more powerful if they were left for the reader to reflect on and not immediately explained away. This tendency for over-explaining made me question who was the intended audience of the book and took me out of the story. There were a few specific parts in the story that also irked me including a line about having children to fill a void and a character bed-sharing with an infant.

This story spans two decades so there’s a fair amount of time that’s quickly described in a couple paragraphs and not detailed which makes sense, but I do wish there were more scenes in the book in place of some of these descriptions so that I could get more engaged in the characters and their interactions. The ending also felt anticlimactic and I wish there was more there. Overall though, this was a book I did mostly enjoy reading and would recommend to others as I can see this being something that some people really love even though it wasn’t that for me.

I’ve never quite read a book like this before, but I found it quite intriguing. It made me think of things I don’t often think about. I liked the LGBTQIA’s reputation in this. The ending of this book I had some mixed feeling about and feel like it was a bit rushed. I would have like it if they would have done like a 10 years later type thing at the end, but over all I would definitely recommend I enjoyed reading it. Thank you NetGalley, the author and publisher for letting me read this book in exchange for an honest review.

A bit too scattered to completely work, not just in terms of the ideas being conveyed but also in terms of the characters and narratives. Despite there being many perspectives, each character is easy to connect to as they are introduced, as there's a clear view of their relationships, struggles, decisions. However, as the story continues, that specificity seems to take a bit of a backseat. Each character gets relatively rushed continuations of their narratives (and chapters are rather short here), which makes their respective conclusions seem not to be entirely earned. I appreciated the worldbuilding and the way the author plays with ideas, but this didn't really stick the landing for me.

Yours for the Taking reads like the girlbossification of the anti-girlboss novel. Korn's quality of prose and pacing kept me from putting it down, but the longer I read, the more heavy-handed the story became. Unfortunately, any nuance is stripped away from what could have been a very interesting novel.

Could not finish fast enough. Stayed engaged with every page. Was stimulating on so many levels. Will be looking out for more from this author. Thanks for allowing me to read!

Ooh, I got chills from the prologue alone.
This story has all the elements to get me to love it: near future, sci-fi dystopian and queer.
As someone with climate anxiety (who doesn't have it at this point, am I right?) my palms were sweating with the descriptions of this not so distant future.
I really liked Ava and this story had me hooked from the beginning. What first drew me in was the cover and then the title (I try not to read the description so I don't get any spoilers) and then the story completely swept me away. I'm excited to read future works of this author and to share this one with my friends and followers.
Sometimes there are just books that really hit you with their brilliance and this is one of them. Great work!
Thank you so much to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC!

Yours for the Taking is at once a found family story, a queer narrative, and a scathing critique of anti-trans movements backdropped by a climate dystopia and capitalism run-amok. There are so many levels to the story and characters that it’s like a box of mysteries just waiting to be unpacked and left me speechless.

This story takes place in a disaster ridden world, where the climate is in full collapse and humanity is on the edge of societal breakdown. In the midst of this, the Inside project is proposed, where structures are built in population hot spots around the globe and small portions of humanity are invited to attempt to ride out the climate disaster. And if one of the Inside cubes goes a little rogue and decides to cut men out of its population? Well, nobody needs to know.

Yours for the Taking is extremely concerned about the topic of autonomy, particularly women’s autonomy, which is cognizant of debates and struggles today. It’s what the book, ultimately, is about. Each of the characters is grappling with autonomy in some way, some to a greater extent than others, which makes the overall narrative seem in conversation with real world problems.

This is one of those books where I would have to suggest doing as little research into it as possible just to get the full effect of the unwinding story. I went in fairly blind (though I requested the ARC, I had only skimmed the summary and heard a few of my TikTok mutuals gush about it) and it was probably the best way to experience the narrative. The extent of the antagonist’s atrocities and plans is revealed slowly and deliberately by Korn.

The power of this book and the way in which it weaves together the stories of several women to create an overall message about womanhood, paired with a strong writing style puts Yours for the Taking in the running for my best book of 2023 (and it hasn’t even been released yet!). Though the themes are heavy and the topics hard to grapple with at times, I truly believe it is well worth the read.

Korn, following the tradition of American utopia and dystopia novels like Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward 2000-1887 and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland, writes a book that's more about the ideas than the characters themselves. Here, Korn's characters are facing the limitations of feminism in a world rapidly deteriorating from climate change, and when gender is so much more than a male/female binary. The characters, all interacting with a so-called feminist utopia where men are abandoned and left to die with the Earth, each come face to face a future that is indeed female, which brings about its own oppression and systemic issues. Korn's novel seems to argue that no utopia can be built off of a gender binary; that any form of hierarchy will ultimately find ways to be harmful and oppressive. A great book for your book club to discuss, and one you'll likely want to dissect with a group of friends. Though sometimes a bit on the nose and blunt about its themes, this seems to follow with the intent of the book– not to explore characters, but to explore a philosophical question.

Yours For the Taking is a philosophical utopian novel that will leave you thinking. As the novel explores the construction of gender as a binary and the deterioration of the Earth, it asks the reader to ponder: Should the future really be female?