XVI (original 2011; edition 2011)

I read this book for my March Random Reads pick. Going into the book I knew it wasn't going to amaze me. I read a lot of bad reviews on this book, but of course I still forged ahead to make my own decision. Unfortunately, the reviews were right with the one. It had great promise, an interesting plot, but it just wasn't executed eloquently. So my run of mediocre books continues. I feel like I haven't read a solid four or five star book in forever!

Nina Oberon is fifteen, soon to be sixteen. In her world sixteen year olds or "sex-teens" have no rights. They are basically expected to have sex with whomever. One of the problems I had with this book is that the author didn't do a lot of background world building. The End-Of-Wars was mentioned frequently, but what were they? How did this sex-teen world come to be? The concept of the world is interesting, but it wasn't explained very well.

Girls don't have choices in this world. Women's reproductive rights are no existent. If a girl gets pregnant before she is sixteen she is forced to have an abortion and if she is sixteen, she doesn't get to decide, only the guy's opinion matters. Throughout the novel girls were either deemed virginal if they dressed conservatively or whores and deserved what they got if they dressed provocatively. There was a lot of unanswered questions I had by the time I finish the book. Hopefully, they will be answered in the next book, but I honestly don't think I will be continuing with this series. ( )

Author
Julia Karr grew up in Seymour, Indiana. She has lived all around the US but now resides close to her hometown. She has two daughters.Her love for writing has been a part of her all her life. After having children and reading to them she grew into writing stories for children. For more information visit http://juliakarr.com

Review
This books proves again that I am not made for dystopian novels. The story is good very strong but I cannot get used to worlds that different. I start to imagine all these weird and impossible things and it does not feel right. After I try to morph the whole dystopian world back into something familiar so I can at least make an effort to keep up with the story without being to distracted but that is not always working either. It is a shame cause as mentioned already this is a strong story.
The main character Nina is your average 15 year old girl. As a woman you will definitely be able to get identify with her. The other characters are brought to you trough Nina's mind giving you a bit of a colored opinion on them but that helps with attaching to the right characters and building up aversion against the bad people. The author did a good job on this.
The story could be placed in any time, past, present and future. Girls and their sexuality. How man (mis) treat them and decide for them when they are ready. Not much respect there. That message is very clear. But unfortunately for this book it is all set in a futuristic world where people can be tracked with GPS and girls get tattoos and there are little carts floating but still in need of roads and as soon as that whole world kicks in I loose concentration.
For lovers of dystopian books this is a to read for sure. Specially Hunger Games and Mortal Instrument readers will enjoy this book. For me it has been a pleasant and entertaining reminder to stay away from dystopian novels. ( )

I was hoping for an explicitly feminist young adult dystopia here, maybe an updated [b:The Handmaid's Tale|38447|The Handmaid's Tale|Margaret Atwood|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1294702760s/38447.jpg|1119185] for the younger crowd. Something empowering, that assured teen girls that yes, sexuality is sometimes complicated, and exploring it is okay if you want to, and waiting is just fine too. Instead, what I got was some wishy-washy future-lite with a trite love story thrown in. Ugh.

Can I just say? I am so fucking sick of love triangles. Or complex polygons, as might be more appropriate here. Maybe I'm getting too old for silly high school drama. I did appreciate the absence of a "love at first sight" storyline. It does, however, feature the "love interest is a creepy stalker (but his dedication is endearing!)" trope.

So anyway, in Julia Karr's dystopian vision, all girls are tattooed with the Roman numerals "XVI" on their wrists upon reaching the age of sixteen. This lets any leering men nearby know they're fair game for sex and violence and whatever other recreational perviness they can imagine. The government and media advertise this as a rite-of-passage all girls should aspire to, and lots of girls embrace being "sex-teens". But not our protagonist, Nina, because she is an innocent, virginal girl we should all emulate! Excuse me while I gag on all the self-righteousness.

Of course, since this is a dystopia, the government and media are responsible for lots of other vaguely sinister things, but I honestly feel like "dystopia" should be in scare quotes because the world-building is so lazy. Cliches abound. Surveillance everywhere? Check. Hovercars? Check. Future-slang and unnecessary acronyms? Check, check. High-tech communication gadgets that sound exactly like cell phones? Check. (Seriously, this was written last year -- you can't even extrapolate from modern technology?) Other than a few such futuristic acoutrements, we're given no information on how society has changed in the intervening decades between the present day and the 2170s, when this novel is supposed to be set. One could almost guess this was a contemporary novel. The rape culture represented here is certainly very similar to what women today live with.

Which brings me to my biggest issue with this book. For what is apparently supposed to be a feminist novel, there is a ridiculous amount of slut-shaming here. Every interaction Nina has with her best friend, Sandy, is a classic example of the virgin-whore dichotomy at work. What's more, the author seems completely oblivious to this. I'll spoiler-alert this, but it should come as no surprise to people who are familiar with how sexual female characters are portrayed in mainstream entertainment: Sandy, who is boy-crazy and described as dressing revealingly in the text, gets killed, while our Madonna protagonist decides not to have sex with her boyfriend (despite almost losing control to those eeeeeevil hormones) and lives. Pro-tip: Your dystopia isn't horrifying enough? Just have one of the female characters raped, killed, and thrown in a ditch! She dressed like a hooker, so she had it coming, right?

I wish these awful stereotypes and terrible messages to send to teenage girls could have been at least partially offset by good writing, but that is sadly not the case. The first third of the book largely consists of clunky infodumps in the form of "As you know..." dialogue, the foreshadowing is over-the-top obvious, and all the twists can be seen coming from a mile away. The characters are all pretty one-dimensional and I'm shocked the villain didn't have a mustache to twirl, because he was a walking cliche in every other way. The whole thing was just extremely heavy-handed stylistically.

You know what? This started off as a two-star review, because I really liked the concept and it was a quick, easy read, but now I'm pissed. One star. Goddamnit. ( )

Nina is just a few months out from her 16th birthday. Her best friend is excited about it: when they turn 16, they'll be legal to have sex! And be chosen for the FeLS program! [Female Liason Somethingorother, basically escorts, I think, for government officials?] It's a way out of their Tier 2 lives, anyway. Nina is less than thrilled: being 16 means men can force themselves on her pretty much whenever they want with no repercussions. Things are going poorly enough for her already, but then her mom is killed, and right before she dies she tells Nina that her late father is actually still alive and she needs to bring him a particular book. No easy task, since her mother was possibly working for a resistance movement while Mom's abusive boyfriend is a government agent. Kidnapping, stalking, conspiracy, you name it, until the book mercifully ends.

I want to say there's a big point here in the whole "at 16 girls can legally have sex" and in the caste system, but that part of the world is never really explored. There's talk (in the "As you know..." style of dialogue) about how the world is vegetarian now, but no discussion of when the world became so misogynistic as to openly objectify young women and establish government programs for sex slavery. (Wait, that was supposed to be a big reveal, except it's totally obvious from the beginning, so idk.) Nina's best friend, the boy-crazy airhead, is basically slut-shamed at every opportunity, from the way she dresses to her flirting to her desire to be chosen for the FeLS program (somehow not guessing what the "Female liasons" might do). Advertising is omnipresent (again, no commentary on the society; it's just there), and the class system supposedly allows for no blending among the classes, except that Nina and her friends range across the whole spectrum.

Overall: not something I can recommend in any capacity, really. The dystopian elements are so underrepresented that it seems a stretch to even list this as dystopian. It's not even background; it's just not there. ( )

While some of the cyberpunk/dystopia feel to this book was interesting, I just couldn't get behind the story, writing and views on sex, which were so black and white. I know the society had warped female sexuality, but still, the girls who went against the grain also seemed to come across with an outlook on sexuality that wasn't their own, just reactionary, and those who were sexual/into the idea of being so were doomed to horrible fates. I know the society was really messed up, but still working within it didn't sit well with me. The relationships felt clunky because of this, especially with Sal and Nina. ( )