Elena Fairchild is a teacher at one of the state's elite schools. When her nine-year-old daughter bombs a monthly test and her Q score drops to a disastrously low level. As a teacher, Elena thought she understood the tiered educational system, but as a mother whose child is now gone, Elena's perspective is changed forever. She just wants her daughter back. And she will do the unthinkable to make it happen.
This story is impactfully written, I can tell you now that if you want to like the main protagonists in your books, this won't be for you however, if you can go beyond that and the terrifying familiar nature of the plot, this dystopian book may be for you. But is this a dystopian book or the revisiting of events based in history or a the terrifying reality of what could be happening now or in our future.
Elena has two children, Anne a high grading "Silver" schooler and Freddie a struggling "Green" schooler. Each month she watches as one of her children excels in the current education climate, while Freddie struggles with anxiety and needs extra tuition from Elena to scrape through. This time it's different, Freddie just does not appear to be coping the day of the monthly "Q" test. This time she is unable to help Freddie as the following day she receives her notification that she will be sent off to the "Yellow" school for residential education. Elena does attempt to try and save her daughter but her sadistically "Child Catcher" husband Malcolm, is a high up employee of the education department and a stickler for the rules. His cold demeanor is not only aimed at Freddie with the news and Elena finds herself on the edge of a dilemma. Keep her marriage and stay home with Anne, or choose Freddie, fail her own assessment and attempt to rescue her from the fate of a "Yellow" school.
This has strong inferences from the offset to the german Nazi regime and their ideology to endeavour to create a supreme race however, as with that there is no balance to their logic. This book shows that people can attempt to control population (as we have seen on occasion throughout history). It brings us brutally close to current times with inference of the extension into modern automation reducing the necessity for human roles (e.g. Amazon Drones).
It is apparent that Elena has made massive errors in her behaviour and judgement throughout her life despite her Oma's attempts to highlight the errors of her ways, as we flash back to her history and henceforth her involvement in the introduction of this population control system. With this information it is at time hard to swallow and feel any kind of kindness or empathy for Elena. Alright she has chosen to rescue Freddie but you are left wondering if this is her repentance for past transgretions or for the love of her children.
This book is a four star read for me purely for the speed the book rushed to its conclusion. I do feel a great deal of depth was applied to the first 3/4 of the book and built the dread and change to the way of life and the characters. Sadly the final quarter of the book felt rushed to it's conclusion and large chunks of explanation to the questions you may have are loosely answered with small snippets of press and social media releases, this sadly just didn't cut it for me. I also felt the ending was somewhat "happy ever after" too which wasn't in keeping with the dire content of the book, in this instance I would have felt it more appropriate to leave it hanging rather than wrapping up the characters fate the way it did and with the return of Jo!!
I would like to thank NetGalley & HQ for the opportunity to read and give a true and honest review.
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