A blurb by Margaret Atwood is a very powerful thing, it certainly made me pick it up. Unfortunately, while The Blondes sounds promising, there was very little delivery. Hazel Hayes - blond - has been having an affair with her married professor, and now she's pregnant. Meanwhile, rabid blondes have been attacking at random in New York City. Hazel is in hiding, trying to protect her baby. This all sounds like it could be interesting, but it falls flat.

Hazel is in NYC when a a mysterious pandemic occurs that only affects blonde or fair skinned women. They go crazy and attack people. Written pre-Covid. ARC.

I was very excited about this book, having read good things from other authors about it. However, I was disappointed to find the book was centered around one life affected by the "blonde outbreak" rather than the outbreak itself.

(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)


Hazel Hayes is a grad student living in New York City. As the novel opens, she learns she is pregnant (from an affair with her married professor) at an apocalyptically bad time: random but deadly attacks on passers-by, all by blonde women, are terrorizing New Yorkers. Soon it becomes clear that the attacks are symptoms of a strange illness that is transforming blondes—whether CEOs, flight attendants, students or accountants—into rabid killers.

Lots of promise, very little in delivery...

This should have been a book that I loved - a somewhat dystopian novel about a "plague" that infects only blonde women, making them rabid and attacking people. I guess revenge for all those dreadful blonde jokes...

Anyway, we spend far too much time reading about Hazel recounting to her unborn baby how she ended up hiding out in a cabin in the woods, and recounting how much she disliked the married man who is the father of said baby. It was just boring. By the time we got to the so-called action, the book was lost for me. I didn't really care anymore - I hadn't connected with Hazel so my interest in her life - whether she lived or died - was nonexistent.


Paul
ARH

This had a really odd tone that made me want to stop reading immediately.