A review by onthesamepage
Poster Girl by Veronica Roth

dark reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I know this is technically a scifi mystery, but if I take a moment to really analyze the themes here, I would almost consider this horror. Not the slasher kind, or the kind with monsters and supernatural creatures, but a type of psychological horror born from living in a surveillance state. Of course this book paints an extreme picture where every choice you make has positive or negative consequences, and the government monitors you constantly, but I think the surveillance part especially probably happens far more than we think it does. Which is a scary thought.

"It seems to me," she says, "that if your every choice is in defiance of a system, you are as much a servant of that system as someone who obeys it."

I'd consider this book more of a character-driven story than a solid mystery. It's about Sonya learning to let go of all the rules she has lived by her entire life, and about how the Delegation isn't the utopian society she still considers it to be. The mystery of the missing child is what forces her to confront some of her convictions, but it ultimately feels more like the driver for Sonya's character development than the core of the story. That said, I enjoyed seeing Sonya come to terms with what she thought to be true. She comes across initially as someone who is a stickler for the rules. She keeps a constant tally in her head of all the things she does, and how many points they would get her in the old system. However, there are also moments where she exhibits an unexpected fierceness and unwillingness to let others walk over her, and I think we got more of those moments as the story progresses.

I do feel like there are some plot holes here. For example, Sonya has an Insight in her eye, which allows the current government to access footage of where she has been and what she's been doing. I just keep wondering, why didn't she cover it with an eye patch to stop them from tracking her? She even mentions how uncomfortable she used to find the thought that they could watch her undressing, and how she had to let go of doing everything in the dark because it just wasn't possible. An eye patch seems like a pretty decent solution to me.

 
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