I received the audiobook via netgalley! Thank you to netgalley and the author!

I did enjoy this book but there were spots where it was very slow! The synopsis of this book intrigued me but i did find myself pushing through some of it.

The year is 2099 and it is a world where men are now extinct. and women are controlling the world. I enjoyed to concept of this book and our main character finds herself missing men but something was still missing for me. However, the were some moves the author made in the book that shook me.

I do recommend reading this book just make sure you push through the slower areas and you will enjoy the end.

Menfolk went extinct about 50 years ago and since then the all woman world has cured hunger, made peace, experienced unprecedented economic growth etc. Kittens stay cute forever and makeup never smears…

Yeah I’m sure womankind could do that but if all men really up and died, one of the first thing they’d invent would be a whole fleet of Magic Mike Bots, just enough AI for pillow talk, Channing Tatum’s body with *ahem* that one appendage replaced with one of those magic rabbit wands - I say this as a gal who’s only interested in other boobies but I know damn well what my fellow ladies would be prioritizing. Now maybe these AI gigalos exist in Athena’s world but I doubt it since she’s has to sketch out her own thirst traps.

Good narration, not a perfectly linear timeline but the narration handles it smoothly.

Wanted to like it more than I could. Some of the world building felt a bit hollow if not optimistically sexist but that could just be because I’m a female reader watching a world of exclusively women as written by a man.

All the characters felt a bit flat except for the actual robot, probably because less personality is expected from AI.

Captain Bell is too sarcastic and flippant for a well awarded professional.

Honestly if any woman really thought the elimination of males would turn the universe into some kind of lesbian utopia we would have already witnessed the attempt at the first female instigated genocide.

When I read the synopsis of this book, I thought that it was such an interesting concept for a book. A world without men... utopia or dystopia, you decide. 🤣 I love to see how futuristic stories will create our world and I enjoyed this one, though I feel like it was a bit unrealistic for less than 70yrs in the future. I thought that Athena’s character was interesting; she was young but smart, with a longing that she could not quite explain.

I found thenarrator's voice to be very clear and easy to understand. She also did a good job of giving the characters different voices/accents. With that said, I found myself a bit lost during the story. Not only is this told in a non-linear way, but they also have random “Wiki” posts sprinkled throughout the book (some of which I wasn’t sure of the importance). I also found the ending to be very rushed, which is always a bit disappointing.

While this book sounded interested in the blurb I truly struggled to get through it. I almost gave up on it but I forced myself to finish it. I liked the idea of having all female characters but it wound up being really really confused by all the similar characters. I also found the narrator to be kind of monotonous and boring. I couldn't focus so I finished in the ebook version.

A future where men have been wiped out.....what an interesting premise, and one which made me intrigued in the story. Sci-fi is not my go to in the book world, unless there is some horror involved, so I was a bit hesitant. Well, I am very proud of allowing myself something different as I truly did enjoy this story. There were a few moments where the vocabulary and dialogue was a bit much for me, but I figured this was done to bring their way of interacting with one another to life. I especially enjoyed the use of news articles as well as wikipedia articles to bring background information into the story. I did this as an audiobook, and it a totally worked brilliantly. I was not expecting the loss of some characters, and was surprised that I was affected by it. I would definitely encourage those with an interest in scifi to check this one out!

3.5 stars.

Athena's Choice is the 2nd book that I've read this week about what life might be like in the late part of our current century. In this book, a bio-engineered virus killed off all of the men on Earth during the 2050's. Life goes on for the women and they continue advancing technology and science. By the 2090's there are women who have never seen men. Some of them want to bring men back using a genome. Athena is a young women who gets wrapped up in a plot to steal the genome and in the course of things she learns more about not just her own past but society's past.

I like the first part of this book better than the latter third. I enjoyed the world-building and hearing about all of the tech that this near-future society had. Athena was a likable character and I was curious to see how her story played out. Although the book is written by a man, there is a definite feminist bent to this story. Many women in the future dystopian society feel that men were the root of all evil and that they are better off without them. The story was an entertaining quick read, but in the end something missed the mark with me in how everything wrapped up.

Who runs the world? Girls.
IN ATHENA’S CHOICE, WOMEN HOLD ALL THE POWER -- AND FIND THEMSELVES QUESTIONING THE MEANING OF HUMAN EXISTENCE.
--
Part of growing up is realizing that adults make mistakes. As adults, we learn that there are some mistakes that we can choose not to repeat.

The titular heroine of Athena’s Choice learns this lesson in the hardest way possible, when through great personal loss the 19-year-old discovers that she may be the only person on earth who can right a terrible wrong committed long ago.

The story takes place in 2099, fifty years after a virus has killed all the men on the planet. Women have rebuilt the world with feminine values -- there is no war, poverty, or hunger. Artificial intelligences and other technologies have eliminated all manual labor. The most important currency in this near-utopia is cooperation, as women work together to make the world a better place.

Though the technology exists to engineer babies of both sexes, the scientists of 2099 have long ago learned that any male babies, once born, would die of the virus. So for fifty years, doctors have only made female babies that are raised by female parents.

The plot of Athena’s Choice mirrors the story of creation in the Christian Bible, and author Adam Boostrom uses apples -- sometimes, quite heavy-handedly -- to symbolize forbidden knowledge, like the Biblical “tree of knowledge” from which Adam and Eve ate apples, causing them to be cast out of paradise.

At the start of the book, the women of Athena’s world are having a debate. Assuming they could engineer males who are immune to the virus, should they? Would the return of men fill a missing piece of women’s hearts and psyches? Or would men bring an end to world peace and a return to violence and greed? Should women remain forever as a lone sex in this paradise they’ve built without men?

These are difficult questions for anyone to consider, and Boostrom does a great job of communicating the teenage Athena’s confusion and disbelief as immense decisions are thrust upon her. Before her story ends, she must answer an age-old question for all of humanity -- what should we do with the knowledge that we have?

This was not a genre that I typically read - but the synopsis was intruiging.

I enjoyed this foray into life in the future - especially the details of the day to day life, with all of its digitally printed clothes and high tech conveniences. Interesting to see the way a world filled with women in the high ranking positions was run.

The world is 50 years on from a virus that killed off all of the men, accientally. While the means of propagating the species has been found, men are still missed by many of the population, and a project to reintroduce men is underway, However, this project has been sabotaged.

Teenager Athena finds herself embroiled in the investiagtion of the sabotage, and ends up, eventually with a very distinct choice to make.

I foud the chracter of Athena was well done, and enjoyed the plot of the investigation. However I found the ending lacking. While it didg make me think, which was the whole idea of course, I would rather have had a definitive ending to the story,

This book has an interesting plot that gets the reader curious to read the book. A world devoid of men. Why? How? Then you remind yourself that the author is a man and the storytelling is limited by his brain creating women characters and plots. This book has potential and could probably make for a great B Sci-fi movie with hot Heroines. It is limited and distracting with the choice of storytelling. The characters are never quite developed enough to attach to. The book is ambitious and pretentious in the fact that is seems to want to be meaningful. Honestly it just leaves the reader with a bad aftertaste. Almost like word mansplaining. I almost wanted to throw the book away when the AI started explaining what feminism should be. Overall this book is unmemorable at best.

》The question is not whether men are a risk to every element of the stabilized society. They were, they are. They always will be. The question is whether the pleasures they bring are worth the risks."

The year is 2099 and the population is a 100% women. 50 years ago, an experimental influenza virus accidentally killed all men on Earth but currently there is a controversial scientific project called The Lazarus Project going around which its main goal is to bring men back. But there has been a problem, the men genome has been stolen. And the main suspect of that crime is Athena Vosh, a regular 19 year old teenager who occasionally wonders to herself what would life be like if men were still alive.

The premise sounded waay too good for not to read this book! Lately I’ve been so drawn to dystopian books where the world is populated just by women and this book wasn’t the exception.
Even though it reads as a light YA scifi, the society created by the author is way more complicated than I was expecting, but in a good way; It was so well explained and well executed, and so easy to get engaged in the story.

I love it when science fiction books have segments from different mixed media (real or fiction). In this case, in this book, we can appreciate scientific articles, reports, school presentations from different characters, adds for different technological products, AIs moral laws, and so on. I think this give the reader a better idea of the world building in such a unique way!

I also really liked the self-discovery journey that Athena goes through the entire book and the cryptic dreams. And that final plot twist was everything!!

I understand the story takes part in the post man-world, but I was expecting getting in the lives of other women missing their men relatives, grieving for them, and stuff like that. Like I said, maybe we, as readers, didn’t get that because this story happens 50 years after men extinct but still, I was expecting to see a little bit more of that.

Talking about the lgbt+ aspect of this book… I have mixed feelings. At first, I was a little bit confused about Athena and Naomi’s relationship, which is fine, we don’t need a label for everything If the characters don’t need them. Then it was more explicit, I was grateful, because I started to understand their dynamics. But my only issue is that I was expecting more queerness? Being in a women-only society, I would have expected that many more women would show their queerness. But that’s just an observation. I think this book is way more than that. It’s about women, it’s about feminism.

But it also talks about religion and its place in the life of scientists. It also talks about gender and the difference between women and men; I really, really loved that chapter where the characters (I can’t recall know who) talk about statistics about crime and compare both genders. It’s pretty terrifying (and true) that the majority of crimes are committed by men and that we, women, are constantly living in fear.

Like I said at the beginning, dystopias with a female world are right up my alley, but I don’t think this is reads as a dystopia, at least not a 100%. I think this can be consider a dystopia as well as utopia. It’s a thought-provoking light scifi read with its main focus on feminism which I highly recommend. Like the author says in the epilogue, this book is about a society where the human genome has been altered in a way that the ego gen has been suppress, whether that can end up being good or bad, I think is up to debate, if the only way to do so is to eliminate men from the Earth…

The audiobook is pretty simple but it’s perfect that way. I would also highly recommend it since the author’s style is easy to follow and the narrator does a great job acting the voices of each character.

Overall, an easy and entertaining scifi read with an important message that I would recommend to anyone who likes to read scifi and specially to those who enjoy reads with a feminism focus.

I would like to thank Net Galley and the publisher for providing the audio version of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed this sci-fi, futuristic story about a time when men had been wiped out by a virus (fitting time to be reading it too during COVID).
I liked the little snippets from articles and how the mystery weaved together. I did find it a bit slow going in parts and had to work to piece all the players together, but it all came together in the end and and for the last few chapters I was really engaged. But the ending was weird.

I listened on audio.

A very unusual story and not something I would have thought of picking up to read. However I did enjoy reading it snd warmed to the main character. I found myself wanting to read more and more as I wanted to know what was going to happen.

I was intrigued by this novel's summary because I love to read any feminist dystopias, and although I was skeptical that a male author could write one well, I was willing to give it a shot since it was available as a Netgalley audiobook. Yikes! I rolled my eyes when I realized the tone and style was YA (I believed this was adult fiction when I requested it.) I was bored with the endless descriptions of food and clothing being printed on demand, and frustrated with the handling of non-binary characters affected by the virus, but when the protagonist started dreamily detailing how she wanted to feel her sexual power over men and have their hands on her-- the nail in the coffin. If you want to read a feminist dystopia from that guy in your timeline who's always saying #notallmen, then this is the book for you.

I really liked this book! I gave this a 4 star rating.
I found this a very character-driven book, however I would've liked some more depth to them and some more exploration of the relationships.
The world and atmosphere was enough, however, I really like world-building and even though it was clear that this was the future, I found it hard to imagine the world in my mind. I really liked the AI and sciencey stuff but maybe would have liked some more descriptions of objects or cities.
I did really enjoy the writing, I really liked that every chapter ended with an article or a Wikipedia page. That kind of compensated for the lack of world building for me.
The plot could have been a lot better because I honestly didn't really care about it a lot. I thought this book was more about the characters and how each person had their own opinion about men and what happened/should happen to them. I found it really interesting to think about who I would relate to most. So even though I didn't find the plot very interesting, it was compensated for me. This is also why logic got a pretty high score, as it's hard to not find logic in the thoughts of actual people. As the author said, there's nothing in this book that can't actually happen to us, so that makes it a lot easier to relate to them.
Intrigue and enjoyment were both pretty good, as I never really had the feeling I didn't want to continue this book. However, a stronger plot would've made this book even better.
Overall, this was a nice read which gave me a lot to think about!

[I got an audiobook arc from NetGalley]
[I used G from Bookroast's rating system called CAWPILE to rate this novel. For more information, visit her YouTube channel.]

I liked the first half of the book, where they describe the world, and Athena tries to figure out what is going on and why she was summoned to help find the missing genome. Then at some point the book turns into a wild proclamation on how all men are bad and only want to rape and kill, with more and more long passages on the subject. The actual choice from the title was to resurrect some maybe modified men, or to throw away all the research and maybe modify women so they wouldn't want men anymore. The author couldn't decide for himself, and it didn't really feel like Athena herself was up to the decision.
The mystery part was subpar, with the supercomputer sending clues to Athena in the form of dreams. They did make three men but hold them in a dream state? Why?! Creepy massage implants, anyone?
I listened to the audiobook version. The narrator was mostly OK and easy to follow, I liked how each of the characters was given their own voice.

I received a digital copy of the book from NetGalley

This to me was such a poorly written book, I found it to be a little problematic and as such I had a problem finishing this audiobook..

This book is a wild ride of a book for 2020. There has been a worldwide pandemic that killed all the men of the population. Would a Matriarchal world be better than a patriarchal one? Although an Amazonian type society look like? Well for the next generation there hasn’t been enormous changes. Teens still do what teens do—chat online, use Wikipedia and struggle with plans of the future. Women have been the only survivors for decades the next generation is coming into its own. Project Y is attempting an experiment to bring men back and a saboteur has stolen the scientific materials. Athenas been wrestling with thoughts, feelings even dreams curious about men....now she’s been brought into the criminal investigation by the all-knowing AI that Is the “unbiased” overseer of society. This is an excellent book that explores many philosophical issues about gender and sex without being preachy. The Narration was very good. I think she did a great job with so many female characters creating unique and distinct voices.

I requested this book to review through #Netgalley and leave review freely.

It is the year 2099 and all men are dead. There was a Y virus that killed them all. But now some of the women want to bring men back and have a Lazarath genome that they are doing research on.

Someone as stolen the Lazarath genome. Athena, as been having strange dreams and the AI that lives in their world, has said that Athena can help find it. She goes with the special police to help find out who has taken it and why.

I thought this was strange to ask a random person to help out in a police investigation but went with it. Their first stop is to talk to the doctors who created the genome and all their contacts. Athena's dreams seem to be telling her where to look for answers, which was also strange, but it all becomes clear in the end.

There were a few shocking moments that I wasn't expecting, and really like how things were revealed to us. The last few chapters were really gripping.

3.5/5 stars.

Athena's choice by Adam Boostrom. Narrated by Alex Ford.
I liked listening to this audiobook. It was different as it was set in the future. I liked Athena's character. I liked the narrator too. Different but good. 4*

Very interesting premise but it ended in just good expectations... I'm a bit disapointed about it. It was entertaining but I was expecting so much that ended very fast in a simple adn weird way. Yeah, the word is disapointing... and not believable