Aberrant is a difficult book for me to rate. I've read worse dystopian books but at this point I feel like they're all starting to run together. I don't think this is necessarily a criticism of Ruth Silver, just the oversaturation of the market but I did spend alot of time side eyeing the plot, especially with the similarities to Matched. I also don't understand why the government would allow Olivia to be matched with Joshua if they were just going to snatch her up. I think it was a good start to the series, but I have alot of unanswered questions.

I had high hopes for this book based on the cover and the description, and it started off good, but it kind of lost me after that. Olivia and Josh live in a dystopian society where, because women are infertile, everybody is matched up by the government to be married at the age of 18, and entered into a lottery to choose who will be able to conceive via artificial means. Olivia and Josh are best friends who are matched, but on their wedding night, Olivia is arrested and thrown in jail. She has no idea what is going on until they also arrest her mother, who tells her that she got pregnant naturally with Olivia and had her in secret, which is unheard of. Josh and his mother break Olivia out of jail and they go on the run with the help of a band of rebels.

I liked Olivia and Josh well enough, until they got to the city of Haven, which was the home of the rebels. There they were separated and told that they couldn't be together, and their marriage wasn't recognized as legal. They also told Olivia that she had 3 years to pick a husband (anyone but Josh) and have a kid, or they would pick for her. My problem with this is that Josh just went along with it, after going to all the trouble to break Olivia out of jail! Then stuff happens (no spoilers) and they have to go on the run again, which doesn't seem to bother them at all! So, they kind of became more and more unlikeable as the story went on. I didn't care for the ending, either, so there was that. Basically, I didn't enjoy this book as much as I hoped I would.

3 out of 5 stars.

I got accepted to review this book years ago, but unfortunately never got around to reading it. Apologies for this.

Wow. I was a little wary of this book, since it's a dystopian. With the now waning dystopian craze, there have been a lot of books that became (really bad) formulaic dystopians. But, Aberrant didn't fall into that. It was absolutely amazing! Sweet romance, betrayals, and never knowing who to trust. This book was just brilliant!

When I first got this, I was super excited about the book. But unfortunately, I'm no longer interested in reading it at this point and I don't want to hold onto it any longer.

One of the books that I waited from Ruth Silver, it was worth the wait. Reading this book was really awesome. I can't wait for the next books.

Unfortunately I did not enjoy this title or the writing style. so am unable to provide a full review as it was a DNF

Take a little bit of Matched, a little bit of The Hunger Games and a little bit of The Giver and you have most of the elements of Abberant by Ruth Silver.
Olivia is just days from her 18th birthday. That is the day when she will be assigned a marriage partner by her city's government. It's the way it works in her society - everyone gets married at 18 to an assigned spouse, they are given an assigned job, and then, if they are very lucky, sometime between age 18 and 29 they might get a baby, if they are chosen in the annual lottery. All the babies are conceived in labs, because no woman on the planet (which we assume is Earth?) has been able to conceive since the Red Plague that followed the 4th World War. Because of this, married couples no longer have sex or any kind of physical intimacy. They marry only so they can help each other if they are chosen to raise a baby.
Olivia is very lucky: she is matched and married to her childhood best friend Joshua. He has been her one true friend since the day her father died in a terrible fire at his office. But then Olivia's word falls apart - she is arrested on her wedding night and tossed in jail along with her mother, because of a crime her mother committed: she got pregnant. Olivia quickly learns her mother is the first woman to have naturally conceived a baby in generations, and this might mean Olivia herself could potentially also have babies.
Now the government wants to study her like a lab rat, and the rebels she turns to for help want to force her to have a baby... with ANYONE except Joshua.
The couple goes on the run trying to find anyone who can help them do the one thing that seems impossible in their world: make their own choices about their own future and their own bodies.
It SOUNDS like the premise for a really good book. The problem is, there are so many plot holes it becomes ridiculous quite quickly.


****** WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD!!! ******


First off, books are illegal in this society, but it just so happens that Olivia reads all the time. Because is just so happens that her dad had a whole bunch of illegal books in their basement. So Olivia is the only one who knows about kissing and sex and how babies used to be made. Except that she doesn't, because even though Joshua is completely shocked when she kisses him, (because no one has ever kissed him, since no one knows what a kiss IS in this world) a few pages later he is trying to get him to have sex with her.
During her marriage ceremony, Olivia specifically hopes she is not matched to Joshua because it would be way too weird to marry her best friend. But when the rebels tell them she can't be married to him anymore, she insists that he is only one she wants to be married to because she loves him... in a society where love is not a THING....
It goes on and on and on and on like this. Olivia has never seen a car, but somehow she knows how to drive. She needs to dye her hair (even though she has already told us that there are no luxuries in her world, so no cosmetics or hair dyes exist) but somehow ONE person in their entire universe manages to MAKE HER hair dye (from berries!) that doesn't come off even though she manages to shower almost every day.... even while on the run.
Joshua finds a map to a mysterious city hidden under another map... even though the map is in a museum.... and kept under glass... oh but it's ok because the glass is not locked, so he totally knew to lift up this ONE glass in this ONE museum and look under this ONE map and NO ONE IN THE MUSEUM noticed??? Oh and all of a sudden, a bunch of people have super powers. For NO DAMN REASON AT ALL!
This was clearly a case where an author tried to bite off WAY More than she could chew. She threw in so many things that did not need to be there that it just turned in a big confusing mess.
The book is (of course!) the first book in a three part series. I do not plan on reading the rest of the series, it's just too silly to want to continue.

I do not have this book, it must have been archived before I could load it.