Quick Synopsis – As the effects of climate change worsen, the only way to survive is to be accepted into The Inside Project, a series of weather-safe structures around the world. Yours for the Taking focuses on several different characters and their involvement with the North America Inside located in New York City. What follows is a story that highlights queer love and the problems with corporate feminism.

Song This Reminds Me Of – Broken Horse by Brandi Carlile

Publication Date – December 5th 2023

Rating – 3 out of 5 ⭐

Review – 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.

Jacqueline is the rich white cisgendered antagonist who funds the New York Inside. She wants it to be made in her image of what a perfect society is, which means no men or people who define themselves as men. Already, we get into the sticky gender politics of it all. Can we really blame men for all the violence and wrong in the world? Are women or people who identify as women entirely blameless? Jacqueline doesn’t seem to really care. She’s a girl boss who wants her Inside to only house “good” women (and later she broadens her definition to include non-binary and trans women as well as making sure to include a range of POC). Jacqueline is basically a charismatic eugenicist.

Olympia is the young black queer doctor who gets roped into running Jacqueline’s medical center on the Inside. She also serves as the voice of reason and has to talk Jacqueline out of all kinds of unsavory things, including using IVF to make sure only female-assigned-at-birth babies are being born. Olympia serves as a moral compass and voice of reason, though she does allow another person to be impregnated with Jacqueline’s egg without their knowledge. Fun!

Then we have Eva, she is our every person who has been invited to live on the Inside. She’s a queer white woman whose heart is broken at the beginning of the novel. She’s also forcibly impregnated, so fun! Eva doesn’t honestly have much of a personality; the story just happens to her instead of her being an active participant. Which honestly might be the point; so often when we are faced with atrocities, we just let them happen instead of voicing our opinion or asking why something is happening.

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.

The author tries to explain away a lot of the complacency by stating the characters are drugged through the vents in their room, but I don’t think it would be that easy. No one kept a journal of their day? There was no mention of music or media of any kind, which was also weird. Like the first generation born inside never watched a movie? Or listened to other songs? Everything was so regimented; it just seemed like people would have rebelled.

Overall, I thought the book was messy and could have used more background on what life Inside was like. Drugging your characters so that they’re sheep just seemed boring to me. Again, how could no one question what was going on? Also, to have the other Insides around the world talk about how rape and sexual assaults were rampant seemed so weird. I get that for the story, Jacqueline was using that fact to say she was right by not having men in her Inside, but if these places were humanity’s last hope, do we really believe that every single one of them would basically be crime hubs?

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC!