The Chaperone is a YA version of The Handmaids Tale.

Stella is a young woman growing up in New America. In New America, women are seen and not heard. Their only use is to get married and have babies for their husbands. When girls start their periods, they get assigned a Chaperone, an adult woman who has to ensure their well-being and accompany the girls everywhere because otherwise the girls may be assaulted or kidnapped if they are left alone.

While this story felt familiar, I was still riveted. I listened to half of the audiobook in one sitting. It was very compelling.

My only complaint is that it ended very abruptly and left me wanting more. It feels like it got left open for a sequel, so we shall see…

4.5/5 stars

This was amazing, The Chaperone is like Margaret Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale' but with a YA spin. This was an amazing and refreshing dystopian novel that had me hooked the whole way through. New America was so disturbing and there is a mixed hint of reality especially with the dominance of men yet I loved seeing Stella's character learn more about the truth and see her character arc development. The Chaperone truly makes you reflect on society today and the future of equality (or lack of). I think this will be a big hit for any dystopian fiction fans.

I definitely would not like New America. This book shows what can happen if men suppress women and hold too much power.

This book is a dystopia fiction, but the chaperone role reminds me of young women needing a chaperone when out with young men in the 17th and 18th centuries. The part about this world that made me the most sad was that education didn't really mean much for girls in that society.

I was rooting for Stella the whole time to understanding how oppressive the rules were. Her chaperones breaking the rules added some entertainment in how ridiculous things really were. T

I don't read a lot of dystopia fiction, but I was pleasantly surprised by this book. The narrator added a little extra and helped keep me engaged and gave a bit more of a sinister vibe. Change can come one woman at a time!

Thank you to RB Media and Netgalley for providing me a copy of this Audiobook for my honest review.

The premise of this novel had my interest immediately piqued. A reworking of Margaret Atwood’s classic, but set for a YA audience, closely following New America’s privileged young girls as they entered adulthood. Dystopian novels have saturated the market, however, the hype behind M. Hendrix’s debut had it poised to overtake its predecessors and rival even that of Ms. Atwood’s creation. Quite simply this was a misguided overreach and instead created another gilded copy of the original.

Stella has come of age in a world that has been separated into what was before and what is now. There are two Americas, the Old and the New. These two America’s represent the vast dichotomy in philosophies between Betty Friedan and Phyllis Schlafly. New America, controlled by powerful men, breeds perfect young women that understand their place to take care of their husband, have babies, and never speak out of turn. Stella has been indoctrinated into this society from the moment of her birth with its reinforcement continuing in her schooling. She never thinks to understand her privilege, her family is wealthy and therefor can afford a Chaperone to follow her around and protect her innocence. This was a major plot pitfall in the world creation of New America. To control the narrative the players must be controlled, essentially different classes would NEVER mingle. This would bring up too many questions and questions lead to revolutions.

Stella’s second Chaperone, Laura, finally gets her to see these incongruities. This is NOT the great awakening I would have liked. Stella remains incredibly juvenile, I get it YA, but to such a degree it is grating. Repeatedly I heard Willow’s words in my head, “What are you stupid or something Sequins?”. Honestly, Stella’s childlike idealism is far too much and her character is unrelatable and ingenuous.

The second half of the book focuses on a halfcocked scheme to free Stella from New America. The major issue here is that she never understood how precarious her situation was, not that she was brave, but naively not scared enough. She survives what should have been several harrowing encounters to make it to Old America and then somehow matures enough to return in five months and thinks she will just become a Chaperone. I’m sorry, what????? This is in NO WAY possible. She doesn’t have the acumen to take on feat like this and she is still under 18. Again, Stella’s character is far too unsophisticated to understand her world, how could she ever hope to change it?

Another issue I have with this story is how the writer made light of the multiple situations of rape. I understand this is a YA novel, but change cannot be affected if we do not use powerful words and descriptions to portray the severity of the wrongness occurring.

Based on my rating scale this novel receives 3/5 stars. It is a story that will absolutely affect readers differently and will find favor amongst others beside myself. My review is of the audio production by Laura Knight Keating who did a fabulous job with her interpretation of Stella.

This book is dark and disturbing in so many ways, it tests your beliefs and your morality and makes you think about what you'd do for yourself and everyone around you.

A society where young women are taught that they're less than, that the men in their world make all the rules and they have to obey them.

I know what you're thinking, it's a retelling of The Handmaid's Tale, and while there are some similarities there are a lot of things that are different.

First of all, Stella is 17 and she's never known anything other than this new world. She's never had the option of thinking for herself or making her own decisions. She's never known any kind of freedom but she still makes the decisions that she does.

She has known a life of privilege and has come to terms with the life she's been born into, that is until her Chaperon Sister Helen dies and everything changes, When Sister Laura arrives Stella starts exploring and questioning everything.

On top of realizing that she wants to have a say in her life, she starts putting the pieces of the puzzle together and that will lead her in the opposite direction of everything she's ever known.

Since I had the opportunity to listen to the AudioBook version of this book let me take a moment to talk about the narrator, I have to say Laura Knight Keating does a wonderful job on this one, if I had one critique it would be that the pacing is a bit on the slow side.

Thank you to RB Bedia and NetGalley for providing a copy of this audiobook, I have voluntarily listened to it and all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Thank you to Netgalley and RB Media for sending me an early copy of this audiobook! All opinions are my own!

This is a book that our society today desperately needs to take note of. It will make you extremely uncomfortable in the best way possible. It will keep you thinking and make you want to go outside and dismantle the patriarchy with your bare hands.

I love the way that this book showcases just how insidious situations like this can be. Most people don't grow up to question their society. As kids, you simply know what you know and don't understand that it's not all that's out there. This is a book that really shows you how problematic that can become and how indoctrination happens. I loved that Stella wasn't the typical YA protagonist in that she wasn't already wanting to fight the government and burn everything down. She was just a girl who wanted to live her life, and suddenly she was facing the reality that her society didn't want her to be able to do that.

I love the way her desires pivot and the growth that Stella goes through in this book. I think that it could have been multiple books because we don't get enough time in America. This might have been intentional, but I feel like there was so much more that could be said, especially with Stella having to unlearn a lot about her own society.

If you're looking for a book that will make you think for years to come, pick this one up for sure!

The Chaperone is a YA dystopian novel in the vein of The Handmaid’s Tale. In New America, girls cannot be alone anywhere after their menarche and must be supervised by a trained chaperone.

When Stella’s chaperone dies unexpectedly, she begins to learn about the resistance movement against the Minute Men and the New American leadership.

I was enjoying this a moderate amount until the last quarter when the book really started to sing it’s own song. I’m impressed with the messaging in this book while it also maintains suitability for the entire YA age range. There is limited violence, no sex scenes, and only limited allusion to sexual assault- which felt very important to the story.

Overall, I think this is an excellent YA dystopian novel about the importance of reproductive freedom and the dangers of vilifying those who can bear children as wonton and immoral.

Thank you to NetGalley and RB Media for an ALC in exchange for my honest review.

TW: Rape, Abuse, Extreme Narcissism/Misogyny

Stella is a proud member of New America, a place that strictly controls women and their environments for their own safety. Part of this is utilizing the chaperone system. Stella’s chaperone suddenly dies and she’s given a new one, but Sister Laura is different. She seems to be pushing Stella to question things that she’s always taken for granted. As Stella begins to glimpse freedom and the biases of the system she lives in, she wonders if maybe she’s been misguided all along.

The premise of this dystopian YA was intriguing, but it didn’t work for me. Part of the issue I had with this one is that the antagonists all felt like caricatures of “super evil dudes.” All men in the book with serious page time were this way except for one guy. This made it feel over the top and difficult to take the antagonists seriously. Similarly, while the women were written well enough, there was plenty that could have been added to their development to make them feel more like real people and less like plot devices. One example is that the protagonist has a sister, but throughout her whole journey she barely thinks about her or considers the consequences her actions might have on her sister or if she should try and reach out to her sister in any way. Each character felt one-dimensional in this way.

The character growth of the protagonist didn’t work for me. Near the early/middle part of the book, it felt like a flip switched and suddenly she was questioning everything when she never had before. Then, when something big happens in the last half, the book skips five months of time during which the protagonist supposedly becomes a completely different person. I know the author had to do the time jump to keep the book from becoming too long, but it just made the growth of the protagonist feel unrealistic and like more of a plot device than actual organic growth. And this wasn’t just the case in relation to character growth – the author tried to fit much too much into this book, leaving it difficult to connect with any of it and leaving it all feeling underdeveloped and choppy.

The writing style was also a bit of an issue for me. For one thing, there were 115 chapters in this 448-page book (if you do the math, you’ll realize just how absurdly short these chapters were). The author utilized chapters like section breaks and it kept the work feeling choppy and broke my immersion constantly. This book was another instance where everything was spelled out in excruciating detail rather than incorporated neatly into the writing (telling vs. showing). This unfortunately took away from what could have been some wonderful instances of meaningful analyses of the topics covered in this book or encouraging critical thinking.

I honestly couldn’t even enjoy this read when I tried not to think about it too much. I like the premise of this book, but it read more like a draft than a finished work. If you like dystopian YA reads, you might enjoy this one. My thanks to NetGalley and RB Media for allowing me to read this work. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Thank you for the opportunity to read and review!

I really loved the narrator and the first 75% of the text, which greatly held my attention. However, the latter half of the text fell flat for me. However, I would be interested in reading more from the author and would like to see how life ends up for Stella.

The Chaperone by M Hendrix is an all-too-close-to-reality dystopian young adult book. Stella lives in a world where she must have a chaperone by her side from the time she becomes a woman, learning how to be a submissive, quiet female in the world, and preparing her for becoming a wife; while men happily hold the upper arm. I loved watching the awakening happen with Stella that stirred questions and then outrage, but the ending was not what I wanted it to be. It almost left it open for a second book, but I don't think that was the intention.

Regardless of that, the book was an extremely quick read (finished in one day) and made me feel all the feelings. I think this would be a great book to introduce to teenage girls so if they haven't had their awakening, their eyes may be opened to things that are happening in our current world situations. The narrator for this audiobook did a wonderful job. The pacing was great and emotions were portrayed accurately through vocal intonation and speed at which the story is read.

The Chaperone was an okay read. The concept is interesting and I can see why there have been so many comparisons to The Handmaids Tale made about this title. The idea of women being inferior and having no rights in a new world are all very similar. Where this fell flat for me was the last part of the story. I was so happy when she got out and see why she went back to try and fight the system from the inside but it was all too low stakes for me. Nobody was held accountable for anything and it ended a little too neatly for me. Maybe it is being set up for a sequel but if not it was just too lackluster for me.

I’m so sorry, I really wanted to like this book because I had it on my tbr ever since pre-release hype, but unfortunately, it fell way below flat.
The world’s politics and rules were so over the top and goofy, even I feel that the YA audience wouldn’t fall for such silliness and contradictory sentences. Also, the forced representation AND the ‘oh she doesn’t like wearing heels, boom, she is lesbian’ is such and inaccurate and harmful message to convey.

I was very much into the first chapters but gave up around the 15% mark. So many contradictions and there’s also something I didn’t quite got clear, when the author refers to the setting as ‘New America’ does that include the whole American continent or……?

Stella Graham has been told her entire life how dangerous it is to be a girl. Girls in New America are disappearing or being kidnapped every day. For this reason, when a girl becomes a woman, they are assigned a chaperone—a woman that is her constant companion and helps guide her—if their family can afford it. Families not as fortunate have no choice but to send their daughters to a government school to keep them away from men. Slowly throughout the story and with the help of her chaperone, Stella begins to realize that things are not as they seem in New America.

M. Hendrix does some of the best dystopian world-building I’ve ever read. I could not get enough of Stella and New America. The author did an amazing job of taking serious issues and stigmas that females deal with daily and making it into a dystopian novel. I would love a sequel to this book because I just cannot get enough of New America. Clear your schedule to read this one because you won’t be able to put it down. If you love dystopian books, this book is for you. 5/5 stars.

The narration of this book was excellent! The narrator did a great job of changing the voices of each character.

Wow! This book was great! It made me angry and hopeful and fearful all at the same time. There are many parallels to today's world if the extreme conservatives got alllll the power and that is terrifying! I love me some good, strong, and badass women and that's what this book gave me! Now I'm adding all her books to my TBR!

#TheChaperone
#NetGalley

I don't read a lot of YA because I think at 35, the writing has been too simple for me. But I took a chance on The Chaperone by M Hendrix because I loved the premise of Handmaid's Tale but through the eyes of a teenager.

Overall, I liked it. I was hooked and invested in the story. The chapters and the writing were short and punchy, keeping the story moving appropriately.

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I am very 50/50 about this book. I enjoyed the idea behind this book. I feel like so much happened. I feel like this book could have been separated into two books though. There were many things I felt I needed more information about. I would have liked some more world building in this book. The amount of chapters also threw me off. I feel like there were many chapters that could have been combined. I really had high hopes for this book and unfortunately it was kind of a bust to me. There were many times I wanted to quit reading it but I was determined to stick through to the end. I did feel like the book had good bones though.

Highly recommend for fans of The Handmaid's Tale. Terrific choice with the narrator!!

As soon as I started reading this book I couldn't put it down. It did start to feel very long at the end and the last chapters felt rushed/not in pace with the rest of the book. It felt like the author was just trying to end the book.

On the one hand, I appreciate this wasn't broken into a trilogy or series (it easily could have). I am glad to have gotten all of the story. That said, I think some other parts of the book could have been trimmed/left out to make this not feel as long and so more time could have been given to the end.

That said, I really enjoyed this. I've been looking for something similar to The Handmaid's Tale since I read it and haven't found anything, until now. I also felt it was fairly different and I adored the subtle social commentary.

The Chaperone is essentially a YA version of The Handmaid's Tale. In New America, an Evangelical group known as the Minute Men took over and enforced a strict code of conduct for young girls under the guise of "protecting" them. Beginning at age 12, girls whose families can afford chaperones employ them to supervise their girls, and they're groomed to marry and be submissive wives. While girls are still technically able to get a high school education, it's very much in the "separate but equal" that it's not equal at all.

Stella is the seventeen-year-old daughter of a very powerful man in New America. After her chaperone, Sister Helen, dies suddenly and mysteriously, she's assigned a new chaperone, Sister Laura, who opens Stella's eyes to a whole new world. When Stella's dad arranges for Stella to be married to a cop who's at least twice her age, Stella needs to make a choice - stay in New America or run.

The story is much tamer than The Handmaid's Tale, which I enjoyed because I found The Handmaid's Tale too intense. However, in some ways, it's more harrowing because the world in The Chaperone is so much more realistic and immediate. There's no ritualistic rape in this book, thankfully, though there is one scene where a character relays a story about a woman's assault.

While I enjoyed this book, I think it would have been better if it was split into a duology. The plot points felt too rushed, and Stella's realizations and decisions often didn't feel earned. For instance, right from the start, Sister Laura coerces Stella into breaking the rules, making Stella promise not to tell. Had there been more space, it would've made sense for Sister Laura to test Stella in small ways. Similarly, other plot points happened in such rapid succession that there wasn't enough space to explain or fully support them.

There were also aspects of Stella's belief system that didn't make sense in the world she was raised in. For instance, one of her friends is a lesbian. While I'm glad Stella isn't homophobic, New America is a country that's very much homophobic since women only exist to be subservient wives and baby factories. Yet it's never explained why Stella's beliefs go against the system that groomed her. While Stella talks about old TV shows and Sister Helen gave her some banned books, it doesn't fully explain Stella's beliefs. This could've been answered if some of the banned books Sister Helen gave Stella were queer, and Stella made this connection when her friend came out.

Speaking of her friends, at times, they felt more like props than characters. I wish we got more about them and their ending. For instance, has either of them ever wanted to leave New America because of their differences?

I also have questions about New America. It's portrayed as a fascist, evangelical-like country, and yet it's made clear that racism isn't an issue that doesn't align with that group of people. Yet, the book doesn't explain why. This is where slowing down the plot to allow for more world-building would've helped.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an early copy in exchange for my thoughts.

Very well written book. I listened 🎧 to the audio book but wish I read the 📚 book or ebook cause I get the storie better.
Stella is a strong character even though the things she had to go through.
Would of like to know how Helen her first Chaperone die.

4 Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐🎧

I couldn't stop listening! It was compelling I had to know about this world and Stella.

Seems girls get Chaperones from the time they get their periods, the Chaperone must be with them always. Only Stella's Chaperone dies suddenly.
Stella starts to see things a little differently when she gets a new Chaperone who gives Stella opportunities she didn't have before it opens her eyes to the truth.

Women really only have 1 purpose to marry and have children. Men have a lot more freedom in New America.

The book really is a journey, and then it's also a choice are you going to stand by and watch it happen? Or are you going to make a stand?

I loved it, I hope there is a sequel.
Also, the narration is fabulous, Laura Knight Keating does an amazing job.