I was so excited when I saw Gabrielle Korn had a new book coming out! Yours for the Taking was a great dystopian read and I was pumped to get more of that story. The Shutouts blew away my expectations. It was even better than the first book. I loved digging deeper into what became of the world and how JM Inc even came to be. I loved seeing the work that people did on the backend to try to stop the climate change and fight the government. I think I love these books mostly because this reality doesn’t feel too far out of the realm of possibility so the books sucked me into a world that as terrifying as it is, feels borderline realistic too. If you’re into dystopian reads, this one is a can’t miss!

Tender-hearted, with an under-current of terror, this novel is a wonderfully inquisitive exploration of how relationships are what carry us through difficulty.

This novel is set in the world of the author’s previous novel, Yours for the Taking, but it stands on its own. I have not read that novel and didn’t even read the jacket copy for that novel until I was more than halfway through this one. I imagine if you have read that novel this one may be even better, but I didn’t feel like anything was missing reading this as a standalone. And that is saying something, because this novel doesn’t really have a whole lot of plot to speak of. This novel is more concerned with the characters and their relationships, and uses a post-climate apocalypse as the background to exacerbate the power of those relationships.

The writing itself is incredibly compelling. There are two narratives, that somehow tell the story of three time periods. The first narrative is an epistolary story, a series of letters written by a woman who is crossing the country to return to her young daughter, who she hasn’t seen for a number of years. In the letters she is telling her daughter her own life story, or at least a part of it, and so these letters tell the story of the woman crossing the country in 2041 but also of her life from when she was a teenager in the late 2020s. These letters are intimate, first-person narratives that are filled with heartbreak and regret but also inspiration and pride, with a low-simmering frantic nature infecting them all as she is afraid of being tracked or monitored and that leaks into her letters. This is paired, in alternating chapters, with a handful of different POV characters telling a story in 2078, characters that seem disconnected at first but whose connections are made clear, as is the connection between their stories and the 2041 story, as the novel progresses. These close third-person POV chapters still give us intimate portraits of the struggles and joys of a number of characters. The writing is straightforward, not overly florid or sentimental, but the character portraits are so vivid, told through their actions as much as in description, that I was always disappointed when leaving any character’s chapter. The epistolary chapters are much more emotional feeling, and this balance between the two writing styles and across the multiple timelines is really smart. It really makes the story feel like it has continual forward momentum, even though there is not a whole lot of plot pulling you through the story.

I mention the story is a little terrifying, and that is because the world-building is really stellar and also bleak. We see a climate apocalypse as it unfurls across the six or so decades that these stories span, and it feels way too real and kind of devastating. We don’t just see the weather and its consequences on human life or habitation, but we see the human decisions that lead to the changing climate, we see when and how greed is prioritized over people. This is not a political thriller; I think some of those elements were heavier in her previous novel in this world. Our characters are in play to make any government-level decisions, they are just the folk who are living with the consequences. The world-building is done across these three timelines and through our characters’ experiences, and it is a robust world that feels genuine and complete. There are countless details of the world we don’t know, it is wide open enough for another half dozen stories in this world, and yet it never feels lacking. The big picture is really clear, and it is through our characters’ actions and traumas that we understand how the world is, which is a smart way to build it.

Which brings me to the characters. The characters are the heart of this novel, and they are wonderful. They are diverse and personal and everything about them feels both very specific and entirely relatable. I was rooting for every character we got to spend time with. All of them are the same, insofar as they are trying to survive this world and maybe eke out a little joy while they’re at it, yet their lives are so different that just what that means takes a different shape in each. There isn’t necessarily a lot of character growth, because we see their potential right from the beginning. Instead, this story is a chance for them to unfurl, a chance for the characters to show us who they really feel they are. The queer representation in this story is great, especially seeing how queer identities are discussed in the different timelines. But more important than any individual character or identity are the relationships they create. Because this novel is all about relationships. The way to survive an apocalypse, Korn is telling us, is through other people. It is through community and connection. Sometimes that can go awry, sometimes expectations aren’t equal, and that community or relationship can become harmful, true. But that is why we need to invest in a complex emotional maturity that centers others’ needs. The relationships here are beautiful and tragic and rocky and tender and spicy and complicated and sometimes painfully simple. We depend on others, and they us, and if we have any hope of anything resembling salvation it is in relationships that we will find it, we will build it, together.
(Rounded up from 4.5)

I want to thank the author, the publisher St Martins Press, and NetGalley, who provided a complimentary eARC for review. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I continue to be very impressed with this author’s ability to create a dystopian world that feels maybe a little too realistic while also centering extremely interesting characters. I enjoyed the multi-POV focusing on Ava and Brook from the first book and a new character, Kelly. Kelly’s letters were definitely a highlight.

This hit a little close to home in light of the current political news and happenings, but that may have made it all the more captivating for me. Plus, I am a sucker for climate fiction and this checks a lot of boxes for me.

I received an eARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

While I’ve seen some say this is a standalone novel, I would have to disagree. This is very much a sequel and without reading Yours for the Taking, you will be missing a lot of nuances and shared history between the characters. It adds depth and emotional connection to the story, so I highly recommend reading it first.

The world building in this novel and its predecessor is starting to hit close to home with climate change ramping up right before our eyes. The government and billionaires not doing anything to curb the change, women’s rights, trans rights, etc. It’s all very relevant and thought provoking to the world we live in. I think the events here are slightly exaggerated to add more tension and dread to the whole experience. It’s nicely done overall, but I found a few nitty gritty things that probably wouldn’t work in real life.

With that said, I quite enjoyed this book. Even more so as the stakes are much higher and I really grew to like these characters, even though they sometimes annoyed and frustrated me to bits! All the different POVs really came together and I started looking forward to Kelly’s letters or how Ava and Brook’s journey to find July progressed. This was more emotional and poignant because of the time jumps and how the story unfolded. All the details about the survivalist cult really made my blood boil. The government’s/rich people’s selfishness and that whole subplot really was a mind trip. I thought the ending wrapped up a bit abruptly, a bit sad but still hopeful for the characters surviving and adapting to their new world.

Thanks to St. Martin’s Press for the review copy.

I was not the hugest fan of Yours for the Taking, but figured I'd give this one a shot regardless. YftT felt so surface level in its commentary and critique, and I think The Shutouts suffers from the same problem. Maybe if you do not spend much time in activist spaces, this will seem wildly new and groundbreaking to you. If so, that's GREAT (genuinely), but keep going bc I promise there's more out there with actual depth that will push those boundaries for you in a way that doesn't come from a place of Cis White privilege (like maybe adrienne maree brown and Margaret Killjoy).

A good starting place, but ultimately lacking.

So I picked the absolute worst (or best?!) week to read Korn’s newest queer dystopian novel following fringe groups of people attempting to survive a world destroyed due to climate change. The best way to describe the fantastic prose across dual timelines (2041 and 2078) is claustrophobic with an undercurrent of horror. The government’s refusal to slow down climate change in tandem with corporations who stand to benefit from societal collapse was just way too relevant to today, as was the rise of extremist ideologies threatening queer people and women’s rights. Korn does a great job creating characters that included a wide span of ages, genders, and sexualities. I particularly enjoyed the way Korn highlighted how the climate crisis defined and changed relationships; parenthood, friendships, neighbors, and lovers. Part of the novel was epistolary, revealing flashbacks and establishing mystery that propelled the plot forward. There is danger, action, character growth, and hope. I didn’t realize this was a second stand alone book to follow up Korn’s Yours For the Taking, and now I plan to go back and read that one as well!

Thank you to MacMillan audio for my complimentary audiobook; narrator, Gail Shalan, did a wonderful job capturing the diverse characters as well as the intense sense of danger. The audiobook had my heart racing and my attention complete captivated.

Not realizing this was the second book of a series, I did find myself somewhat confused with everything going on. However, I rated it 5 stars because the writing is phenomenal, the premise is interesting and timely (a dystopian future dealing with climate change), and I appreciated the queer representation. I plan on reading the first book, which comes out on November 12th. I’m looking forward to it, and suggest those interested in this book wait for that first one to come out.

Thanks so much for the opportunity to read and for introducing me to this author!

Big thank you NetGalley and to the publisher for the chance to review this book pre-release. This is SUCH a great sci-fi story, and I really had fun a fun time reading it. I loved the characters; the dystopian world was complex and interesting to figure out. This was a great companion to Yours for the Taking, and it was really interesting watching the two MC's meet. A more formal review will be available on my IG/TikTok and Goodreads for release.

Found this one a bit confusing and disjointed. Maybe because I didn't realize there is a previous book that helps with some background information. Appreciate the lgbtq+ rep, but otherwise struggled to connect with the characters.

This will be appearing in an upcoming issue of Meredith Sue Willis's Books for Readers Newsletter at https://meredithsuewillis.com/booksforreaders.html

There are several sets of characters and a couple of time frames, and it all comes together at the end pretty nicely. The Apocalypse here is rapid climate change with floods and wildfires and plagues and heat bad enough that people have to keep moving north. The heat is done nicely, and there are several interesting ideas: one, hardly new, is that the wealthy save themselves and a chosen few by pretending to be climate friendly but actually encouraging climate change. They go to something called Inside, with a chosen few others. This is essentially underground behind walls, sealed off. As long as the rich-and-powerful want to keep you in. There's also, especially interesting, a group of climate activists who turn into a cult. They have a lot of earth saving technology that they keep from other groups, including at least one super-bean for life-preserving food. So it's an interesting world, these various survivalist groups, the good guys mostly led by Lesbian or otherwise gender fluid women and young people. What gives it life is various individual young people learning new cultures, as it were, and falling in love and lust. I'll keep an eye out for Korn's work.

The Shutouts revisits the dystopian world of Korn’s previous novel, Yours For The Taking. Captivating and thought-provoking, these interconnected standalones follow characters on the fringe of society as a near-future America experiences climate collapse.

In The Shutouts, Korn delves further into the emotional aspects of her characters, and the story has a more poignant tone compared with the thrill in Yours For The Taking. Korn weaves together multiple narratives across two timelines, adding perspective and depth to her dystopian setting.

A memorable and prescient piece of fiction— this is a standout dystopian novel about survival, corruption, queer identity, and climate crisis.

My rating: 4⭐️

Saga continues from Yours for the Taking. People are still facing climate crisis full force, lakes are evaporating. soil is still contaminated. Underground lifestyle is one to stay, but is it? Because humankind tends to show cultish behavior especially when they feel threatened. The kind of collectives started in Yours for the Taking will lose some its avid supporters in The Shutouts.

4.5 stars

“The Shutouts” is a sequel to Korn’s prior novel “Yours for the Taking,” but could be read independently. It tells several interconnected stories spanning one generation in which the world devolves into apocalyptic climate disaster after disaster, all of it preventable and predicted. The corruption, apathy, and greed is chillingly realistic. We follow an interconnected group of characters working in their own ways and times to survive in this world. We see Kelly, a former climate activist, traveling across the country to reach her estranged daughter while writing letters to explain her own troubled past. Ava and Brook escape the seemingly idyllic Inside Project and seek out Ava’s old flame Orchid, who travels to meet them. Max is raised in a climate haven that operates as a cult, is able to leave, but is haunted by what they’ve experienced. Camilla waits with an injured Max for Orchid to return, letting her father and the rest of their group go on ahead as their home has become too ravaged by storms to remain.
This is a truly remarkable piece of feminist literature foretelling, I believe very presciently, what the near future may be like. All of our characters were imperfect, some making truly awful choices, in a world that seemed to give no choice at all. I loved seeing all the connections between characters get explored, and how life seemed to go on despite disaster, just looking a little different. Korn did a good job of balancing the devastating content of much of the book with small pieces of hope; otherwise, it would have been a very demoralizing read. I think this book is extremely timely and well done - I enjoyed this much more than Yours For the Taking, and Korn’s writing skills seem to only get better.

i would like to preamble this review by saying i was a fan of gabrielle korn's book yours for the taking, which is a predecessor for the shutouts. that said, i don't necessarily think that you have to consume the first to enjoy the second, but yours for the taking gives you a better idea of the world that our characters are living in - ravaged by climate crisis, only certain individuals were selected to join climate-resistant pods.

the shutouts brings us to two timelines - the first set in 2041, 9 years before the original book took place, and following kelly, a mom to orchid. in 2041, it's evident that the world is dying, both by apocalyptic storms, wildfires ravaging the nation, and everything's exacerbated by politicians who are trying to advance global warming as fast as they can in order to thin out the population thanos-style. kelly wants to help expose the government's plans by lending her hacking skills. unfortunately for kelly, that means leaving behind her young daughter orchid.

in timeline two, we jump thirty or so years and into a climate-ravaged country. ava and brook have left the inside project, now taken over by men who use women in the program for nefarious purposes and ava and brook as lab rats. birth is discouraged to the point birthdays are considered tragic events and spare babies are left outside to die.

ava and brook plan to hunt down july, ava's other daughter. for me, i found this timeline to be the most difficult and confusing to follow. though i appreciate also the author including nonbinary and trans characters as well as a lot of queerness, i also found some comments to be a little strange and borderline offensive. for example, a cis afab character tells a nonbinary afab person that "being raised as a girl isn’t the same thing as being one". there wasn't a lot of nuance to this comment and it felt random and strange.

within kelly's narrative, she's writing letters to her daughter and makes a strange comment about sex, saying that it was necessary she learn that it was the only way humans can connect. it just felt like a bizarre way to shoehorn sex into the narrative (this is a running theme within this book, a lot of unnecessary sex) and almost felt a little ace-phobic. additionally, kelly recounts a very toxic polyamorous relationship within someone within her group of friends. i'm not really sure what the point was, but it was a weirdly toxic example of polyamory. some of these choices were just bizarre to me and i was much more interested in focusing on the plot than how korn chose to discuss relationships.

I really loved Gabrielle Korn's "Yours for the Taking" and was thrilled to get an early copy of the sequel novel "The Shutouts." I think a lot of what I liked about Yours for the Taking was the newly dystopian reality, the creation of places for people to live safely from climate change...i.e. a lot of the logistics about what the world looks like at that time and how people are surviving. In The Shutouts I feel it drifts to a more character-driven novel that focuses yes, on survival, but in large part on the relationships between people -- mothers and daughters, friends and lovers. For me, personally, I find this less interesting than the dystopian world and the "Inside Project" world that was created in the first book. In The Shutouts I also had a hard time shifting back and forth in time -- the flashbacks written by Kelly via letters to her daughter, and the present time with the main cast of characters. I see why it was important to have Kelly's story for better understanding of that period of time, but I kept expecting Kelly to pop up and reconnect with the other characters decades later -- the shift in time kept throwing me off. All this to say, if you read and liked the first book, definitely read this one too! For me, I preferred the first better, but both are interesting and creative dystopian cli-fi novels.

3.75 rounded up

While Yours for the Taking explored what it was like to be Inside, The Shutouts illustrates both how it got so bad and what happened to society on the outside.

The scariest part of this book is how easily this could be our reality. None of the characters were all that compelling, though, and the low stakes for them given how dangerous things were supposed to be was rather strange. Overall, an interesting story about doing what feels right versus what's necessary.

Thank you to NetGalley and publisher for the opportunity to read and review.

The story itself wasn't terrible, but the choice of epistolary style for half of the book felt super awkward. It was just difficult to suspend disbelief that A) Kelly would remember the timeline in such detail and B) she would choose to be sharing all that minutiae with her daughter.

I did love many of the characters, and how Korn wove their stories together. I wish this was marketed as more of a sequel to her previous book. I didn't realize that until I'd already started this one, and felt confused for a long time by constant references to plot lines from the prior book.

Overall, read the Shutouts for the decent-hearted people and varied queer presentations. I wouldn't recommend it as a standalone, but could definitely see how it might be a satisfying follow-up to Yours for the Taking.

A queer dystopian sci-fi novel?! Yes please.

I was obsessed with Yours for the Taking last year and it easily earned a spot in my 2023 Top Ten (swipe to see my review).

The Shutouts is a slow build spanning multiple timelines. Some of our favorite characters are along for the ride and we get introduced to a slew of new characters to love.

I loved the bread crumbs that lead to numerous reveals and the ability to see the connections between the two books as we alternate between the years before the inside project and the years after.

With multiple POV’s we get stories that seem almost disjointed, but are ultimately so perfectly related. I do think that the chapters were a bit on the longer side, but the cadence of the writing makes each page move quickly. The letters from mother to daughter that we get every other chapter was such a beautiful way to propel the story.

I started reading this and it's absolutely stunning. I didn't realize it was the second book in this "world" though, so I do have to go back to the first to see how it ties in!

With the nature of the world it’s a surprise I still enjoy dystopian reads but I do! Set in the same world as Yours For the Taking these book creates an epic dystopian world. I’d love to see this one on the big screen.
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Thank you #StMartinsPress and #NetGalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review