Yours for the Taking

DEBUT With climate change ravaging the Earth in 2050, the world builds Insides—fortified communities where a select few can survive the apocalypse. Billionaire Jacqueline, author of the female empowerment manifesto Yours for the Taking, funds one Inside in exchange for the ability to turn it into her own experimental, woman-led utopia. Her increasingly destructive obsession with recreating society in her image distorts the lives of her assistant Shelby, doctor Olympia, and Inside resident Ava, until a series of unanticipated crises reveal the fault lines in Jacqueline’s perfect world. This novel skewers the ways some cisgender white feminists ally with existing power structures as long as the “right” people end up on top. Its commentary is relevant, but the narrative’s preference for telling over showing keeps the protagonists at a distance, leaving central relationships underdeveloped. While the outcome of Jacqueline’s experiment is never in doubt, the details of her feminist dystopia provide an intriguing exploration of how “saving the world” can become warped by ego and ideology.