First of all, I’m a fan of dystopian books and this one started off really great, but the ending fell flat for me. Overall, the story was intriguing and the author did a great job of characterization. I loved the queer rep in the story and how it added to the realness of the entire thing. Climate change is already a scary topic and throughout this book, Korn really does a great job of making it feel more imminent than it already is.

4.5 stars rounded up to 5!

Imagine a future where climate change ravages the world making it unlivable. The governments dissolve and a single government united the world in a common goal, to combat climate change. They devise a plan to create a city Inside, where select people will help to keep civilization alive.

The year is 2050 and Jacqueline Millender founder of Yours!, requests to not only fund Americas Inside but to direct it… from space. The wealthy and elite flee to space as they are unsure if Inside will succeed.

The story follows Ava, Olympia, and Shelby as the main characters with more added in as it spans 30+ years. The characters are all relatable, even though each come from different walks of life.

I was intrigued as soon as I picked this novel up and was bummed to have to put it down to read a book club book. I couldn’t wait to get back to it. This book dives into the problems of white cis gendered feminism, by creating a story you don’t want put down. My only qualm with the story was I wanted to know more about what was happening with the weather and climate outside as the story progressed. We got a little bit of what was going on but I wanted a little more.

Thank you to NetGalley, St Martins Press, and Gabrielle Korn for the eARC copy! I can’t wait to get my hands on a hard copy!

thank you to netgalley and st. martin's press!

2.5/5, rounded to 3

I have reallyyyyy mixed feelings about this book. I'm in the environmental field and while I definitely acknowledge that climate change is an issue we have to worry about, it feels wrong to create a story with such a doomed perspective for the world without any foundation of resilience apart from this girl-boss white feminist savior complex perspective. the story was interesting and intriguing, but taking on this climate doomism perspective is faulty and paints this idea that things are fucked beyond repair when there is still work we can do together as a community !!!!!!! </3 I did like that the author acknowledged TERF-y perspectives within feminism, but there was not really any discussion of race in the story.

overall, I thought this was interesting but takes a bit of a flawed perspective when looking at climate change and the state of the world.

What an incredible story of love, found family, and feminism with excellent queer representation. The book is set in the near future where climate change has ravaged the planet. the solution is to move to the “Inside.” I could not put this book down - the story was so well thought out and flowed perfectly. I felt a connection with each character and I loved to see their stories intertwine.

I recommend going into this book blind, as there were many aspects that gave me goosebumps as I dove into the world Korn created.

This book may be the best book I read all year. I will 100% be purchasing a copy when it is published in December.

I received an advance copy of the book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

I can see what this book is aiming for. I think its heart is in the right place. I support the effort behind it to criticize both patriarchy and white and trans-exclusionary brands of feminism; to take some shots at cultures of power that hate disabled people, hate fat people, hate POC, hate queer people. This book is trying to be a story about queer survival and triumph, and I'm all about that.

Unfortunately, the writing failed to compel me at all. The first two thirds of the book read a lot like one of those training videos you have to watch at work where "characters" with the depth of cardboard cutouts have stilted conversations full of keywords that you will later be asked to select in the quiz at the end. The last hundred pages felt slightly more natural, but for me it was too little too late. There wasn't a single character who felt developed or who I cared about, even after I passed the segment of the book about POV characters compromising their morals and compromising each other's autonomy in the face of environmental collapse and got to the part where everyone turns on a dime and triumphs over one evil Girlboss Prime. For me, examining how ordinary people who think they're progressive might be manipulated into terrible things only works if those people are believable, a little likeable, and I have empathy for their bad choices.

I think a lot of the concepts here would be thought-provoking if presented as essays about the world we're in right now; as fiction about the future, it suffered from way too much telling and almost zero showing, felt sadly soulless, and seemed to mythologize motherhood almost as much as the Girlboss Cult was mythologizing motherhood. But all that said, there are many glowing reviews as well, so...ymmv?

Thank you to the publisher for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

This book is going to be a modern classic. It is incredibly relevant to current world events while containing cautions and lessons relevant for any generation.

There is a decent sized cast of characters, all of which felt perfectly represented in regards to the amount of page time given. They are well rounded with motivations and fears. Since the book spans multiple decades, the reader gets to follow along as the characters age and change.

If you're looking for a book with commentary on white feminism, intersectionality, queerness, climate change, misogyny, and capitalism, you have to check this book out. I am blown away by Korn's writing and her ability to weave such important topics into a novel.

My poor Kindle... The number of times I slammed it down and had an emotional outburst, goddamn.

Yours for the Taking by Gabrielle Korn was more powerful than I ever expected it to be. I was ready for LBGTQIA+ stories and climate change and feminist politics, but my expectations were absolutely blown out of the water.

If you enjoyed 1984, the world-building/political machinations of The Hunger Games, V for Vendetta, or any other totalitarian dystopian society story, and you want to know what it looks like when painted in soft pink and mauve and gardenia-scented, I cannot emphasize it enough: PLEASE READ THIS. Gabrielle Korn delivers us a villain as charismatic as school aged Tom Riddle with the sickening sweet color palette and abrasive femininity of Umbridge.

Rating: 4.5
This book is really good! It’s paced well, with interesting characters and fascinating themes. It takes place several decades in the future and shows what a world even more damaged by climate change might look like. I don’t want to reveal too much about the turns the plot takes, but just know that it’s a bit intense! The story follows a few main character perspectives and each of the main characters has a different type of role in society so you’re able to see the impacts on various groups. Most of the characters are queer as well.
The biggest theme in this book is highlighting the problems and dangers of white cishet feminism, and it explores different aspects of this topic. The only reason this book didn’t get a full five stars from me is that I thought these themes were presented a little too directly on the page; there seemed to be a little lack of trust in the reader to understand the main points.
I think this would make a good book to read with a friend or a group because there’s a lot to talk about!
There’s a few heavy topics in this book, but I’d especially like to note a TW for forced pregnancy.
I’m excited to read more from this author in the future!
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Thanks NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for a eARC of this book.

The year is 2050 and Earth is almost uninhabitable because of climate change. For some people who have been accepted to live in the Inside, there is hope of surviving. Funded by a group of billionaires, the Inside provides a safe haven for people to live protected by the hardships and horrors that now come with living on Earth. Jaqueline Millender is one of the billionaires who owns/runs one of the Insides. But her Inside has different rules and inhabitants specifically no men allowed. She thinks this will protected the women living in her Inside and eventually they will be able to have babies and raise the males in a way that will not repeat past mistakes and their awful treatment of women. The story is told through a variety of characters some inhabitants and/or employees of the Inside and some left trying to survive on the outside. This books deals with issues such as environmentalism, gender roles, trans rights, racism, morality and mortality. I really enjoyed this book. My only wish was that the ending was a bit slower. I did like the ending but thought it should have taken its time.

A strong concept and first half, followed by an ending that I felt wrapped everything up a little too tightly.
Yours for the Taking chronicles the creation of "Insides", gigantic structures designed to help humanity weather the coming climate apocalypse. This book covers one Inside in particular over the course of several decades from multiple perspectives, including it's sociopathic space CEO, head of medical staff, and a couple of the later generation born Inside.

I would recommend this book, but don't be surprised when it plays it a little too safe.

What if girlboss feminism... won?? In Yours For the Taking, we fast-forward to extreme climate devastation and look at what might happen if cis white feminism had full say over one of the alternative worlds that we use to escape. At first I was worried this might feel a little cliche, with lots of references to current clickbaity terms as "history" in a way that didn't quite feel natural. But once the story took off, I became really invested. The last third of the book was by far the strongest to me, I could not put it down. This does feel like a first novel, in my opinion, with some awkward pacing and occasional stumbles in dialogue. However, this does not diminish how much I enjoyed the book and recommend it. A really valuable look at how white cis women weaponize whiteness, cis-ness, and power with the goal of taking over the role of white men, instead of working toward the dismantling of the system entirely.

Thanks so much to the publisher and to Netgalley for providing me with an e-ARC copy of this book!

I have scheduled promotional posts around release day for this book and I will provide a full review on my Instagram once I am able to get to this read.

Rating 5 stars on Netgalley as a placeholder for me to update later once the review is complete.

Will also complete a review on Goodreads once read.

Thanks again!

A, not so distant, futuristic dystopian novel that is equal parts original, scary relatable, and fast paced.
"Yours for the Taking" leaves you with a lot of food for thought in regards to the future of humanity. Feminism, gender, morality, and environmentalism are just a few of the topics Gabrielle Korn has you mulling over throughout this story.

Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC.

This takes be back to OG dystopian societies! When I received this ARC, I fell in love with the book within the first chapter.

Setting in the year 2050, the main character is invited to a all special society. That is all I recommend knowing going into it. I believe that the minimal knowledge known while beginning to read the book is the best possible way to read it. I loved how Gabrielle Korn brought a new novel into the dystopian genre while keeping it original. Often dystopian novels tend to be similar, but Gabrielle Korn incorporated their own twist onto the genre.

Overall, this book was a 3.9/5. I absolutely loved it and would definitely recommend this to anyone considering it and will be getting my own physical copy once it comes out in December! Support LGBTQ authors and expand your reading horizons!

I do not like this book at all. At first, I thought it was amazing, a dystopian climate fiction with gender rep, trauma rep, mental health rep and lots of diversity. Then we get a crazy and Uber-privileged white woman who wants to have women only in the oasis they are creating. Those women are also largely non-cis. Great. However, the thing is that this book makes is a bad thing for anyone to be straight, for trans people to exit in the all female Inside and for mother to be the most important people in society such that people who cannot have children are not good enough and get less in the way of perks, supplies, good jobs, etc. Furthermore, I have just about had it with the new wave of books that show "women's Power" as the same as narcissistic, selfish, over-sexualized men but with vaginas. Women are powerful without being complete and utter assholes who drug women to force compliance, enforce pregnancy against the women's will, take advantage of female vulnerabilities. We already get enough of this crap from men. We don't need books that encourage women to be just as horrible, violent and merciless as men.

Yours for the Taking is a queer dystopian novel and I loved it! It's a book with badass women and power dynamics. We follow Ava as she is drawn into the orbit of corporatized feminism and the Inside Project. In Yours for the Taking, the concepts of survival and sacrifice are central to the story. Seeing the characters make their decisions, it made me think about how much we're willing to do in moments of weakness, for our own selfish reasons as well as the greater good.

I appreciate the diverse cast of characters we got in this story - it was queer and more! Also, I absolutely loved the snippets of New York City we got, from being in Brooklyn to Manhattan, that's my home! Books with a NYC setting are always a hit with me.

One thing I would say could have made this an even better read for me though was that if it were written in a multi-perspective format. I find that books written in that way make me feel more emotionally connected to the story and its characters. It makes everything feel real, which in reading a dystopian can be quite scary, but great.

***Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

I don’t normally gravitate towards sci-fi but this book may have changed that for me. I can’t believe this is the authors first book, I thought it was very well thought out and executed. Each character was real and relatable. I loved the feminist themes and thought the concept of a “woman only” sealed community was very interesting… and seeing how that concept falls flat when someone enforces a rigid framework of what THEY believe makes a woman. Thought provoking and interesting, I flew through this book.

One of my favorite books I’ve ever read. I loved every second of it and didn’t want it to end. Please pick this up if you wish to do something insightful, meaningful, and overall excellent.

CW: parental abandonment (mentioned), heart attack (recounted), death of parent(s) (recounted), sexual harassment, recreational drug and alcohol use, physical injury, forced pregnancy, blood, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), substance abuse, overdose, suicide, kidnapping, transmisia, drugging

I would like to thank NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing me with a free e-ARC of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

When the world becomes almost unlivable due to the lasting damages of climate change, various oases, called the Inside, pop up in various places across the world and millions apply for their chance of survival. In Yours for Taking, it details the story of the North American Inside led by investor and womens’ rights activist Jacqueline Millender featuring interconnecting plot lines between Ava, Olympia, and Shelby during their fight for survival in the Inside.

I know that I’m not one for regularly reading the sci-fi/fantasy genre, especially dystopias, and I would have to be really interested in the plot to want to read it. Well, I can say that Yours for the Taking grabbed my attention when I first saw it on NetGalley and captured my attention throughout the book.

What I think Korn gets right in writing Yours for the Taking is the fact that it’s a really immersive reading experience. In addition to reading the plot as it plays , you also get commentary from Shelby as she writes about her experiences as Jacqueline’s assistant during the creation of the North American Inside. While you don’t get an exact timeline of when events are actually occurring in the book till the last third of the book, Korn makes up for it by having intertwined plot lines featuring the main characters of the book which results in a fast-paced read with quick chapters as the Inside occurs.

Another thing I found to be interesting about Yours for the Taking is that it really reflects the various sociopolitical and environmental concerns facing society today. With climate change becoming more of a global issue each day and inequality still becoming rampant, it was a bit eye-opening to see what our future could look like if we do not act to solve these issues.

Even though Yours for the Taking isn’t coming out until December, this is a book that you need to keep your eye on and I would especially recommend this title for anyone interested in reading a dystopian book that reflects the issues we currently face today.

An original premise that gave me much to think about. My only beef with the book is its abrupt ending, (particularly frustrating when the reader has invested so much time in the characters and world-building.)

This is a feminist tale with a capital F and it's a doozy--what if we created enclosed communities to save our species, but someone took the extra step to make one of these communities all women because, "What have men done except systematically dismantle our rights so they can abuse us, impregnate us, outearn us, and ruin the planet--all with no repercussions?"

It's a shame that this genuinely interesting premise isn't explored fully. It's the vision of a narcissist who lacks morals, who decides right off the bat to heavily drug all the resident and make everything in their community pink. So we pretty much know from the outset that things are going to go to hell.

Watching it happen IS interesting though, and the book has a number of complex female characters connected to this experiment who are easy to love and root for. I guess that's why the ending bothered me. When things fall apart the women are all quickly dispersed on different paths. It felt a lot like the move you'd make if you were setting this book up for a sequel. But I'm not sure it needs one.

Thank you to the author and NetGalley for granting me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.