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A queer, YA Handmaid's Tale meets Never Let Me Go about a dystopian society bent on relentless conformity, and the struggle of one girl to save herself and those she loves from a life of lies.
Everyone hopes for a letter—to attend the Estuary, the Glades, the Meadows. These are the special places where only the best and brightest go to burn even brighter.
When Eleanor is accepted at the Meadows, it means escape from her hardscrabble life by the sea, in a country ravaged by climate disaster. But despite its luminous facilities, endless fields, and pretty things, the Meadows keeps dark secrets: its purpose is to reform students, to condition them against their attractions, to show them that one way of life is the only way to survive. And maybe Eleanor would believe them, except then she meets Rose.
Four years later, Eleanor and her friends seem free of the Meadows, changed but not as they'd hoped. Eleanor is an adjudicator, her job to ensure her former classmates don't stray from the lives they've been trained to live. But Eleanor can't escape her past...or thoughts of the girl she once loved. As secrets unfurl, Eleanor must wage a dangerous battle for her own identity and the truth of what happened to the girl she lost, knowing, if she's not careful, Rose's fate could be her own.
A raw and timely masterwork of speculative fiction, The Meadows will sink its roots into you. This is a novel for our times and for always—not to be missed.
"Oakes employs evocative prose and worldbuilding shot through with equal parts melancholy and hope to craft an intelligent dystopian tale that proves a biting interpretation of contemporary issues surrounding conversion therapy, homophobia, misogyny, and racism." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"This beautiful and important book is dystopian YA at its finest, and its themes of queer resilience and community will resonate for many years to come." —Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (starred review)
"The cast represents a variety of racial, gender, and sexual identities. The timeline hops between past and present, the tension at a constant simmer and a new revelation always around the corner. The book is cogent and incisive in its remarks on our present world: Surveillance culture, reproductive coercion, and anti-queer bigotry are all heightened to their very possible conclusions...Timely and gripping." —Kirkus Reviews
"Gripping... A YA Handmaid's Tale [that] toggles seamlessly between past and present. [For] readers who enjoy dystopian books with feminist themes and stories that highlight the power of queer community." —Booklist
"The Meadows is built with extraordinary parts—stunning language, complex characters, and the most exquisite heart. It's a stop-you-in-your-tracks book, a reach-inside-and-grab-you book. I love its beating, beaming essence—that we are all good, and deserving of love, just as we are. A story of pain, injustice, love, resistance, and hope, this glorious book will lodge inside you and make you feel everything." —Helena Fox, award-winning author of How It Feels to Float and The Quiet and the Loud
"I was utterly swept away from page one. Atmospheric and unsettling, The Meadows is a dystopia that belongs in every collection. This is an incisive examination of the quiet violence of conversion therapies and the revolutionary power of self-love." —Natalie C. Parker, award-winning author of the Seafire series
This information about The Meadows was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Stephanie Oakes is the author of The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly, which was a Morris Award finalist and a Golden Kite Honor book, and The Arsonist, which won the Washington State Book Award and was an ALA/YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults pick. An elementary school librarian, Stephanie lives in Spokane, Washington with her wife and family.
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