Review By Karly
Veronica Roth’s latest novel is a fresh twist from the usual dystopian story. Told from the perspective of Sonya Kantor, the ‘face’ of the former regime, Poster Girl is a compelling dystopian mystery that questions society’s reliance on technology.
Favourite Quote:
“The building that houses Emily Knox is one in a cluster of glass pillars, a few blocks from the cracked cobblestones that surround the market. The street name is Triumvirate, a substitution for its former name, Delegation, as though even the word is now a crime, all symbols of the past doomed to be locked up in the Aperture.”
Goodreads Synopsis:
Veronica Roth tells the story of a woman’s desperate search for a missing girl after the collapse of the oppressive dystopian regime–and the dark secrets about her family and community she uncovers along the way.
WHAT’S RIGHT IS RIGHT.
Sonya Kantor knows this slogan–she lived by it for most of her life. For decades, everyone in the Seattle-Portland megalopolis lived under it, as well as constant surveillance in the form of the Insight, an ocular implant that tracked every word and every action, rewarding or punishing by a rigid moral code set forth by the Delegation.
Then there was a revolution. The Delegation fell. Its most valuable members were locked in the Aperture, a prison on the outskirts of the city. And everyone else, now free from the Insight’s monitoring, went on with their lives.
Sonya, former poster girl for the Delegation, has been imprisoned for ten years when an old enemy comes to her with a deal: find a missing girl who was stolen from her parents by the old regime, and earn her freedom. The path Sonya takes to find the child will lead her through an unfamiliar, crooked post-Delegation world where she finds herself digging deeper into the past–and her family’s dark secrets–than she ever wanted to.
With razor sharp prose, Poster Girl is a haunting dystopian mystery that explores the expanding role of surveillance on society–an inescapable reality that we welcome all too easily.
There are familiar aspects to Veronica Roth’s Poster Girl – think Orwell’s 1984, Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and even the Black Mirror episode Nosedive. However, unlike the classic dystopian story, Poster Girl takes place in a post-uprising world and looks at life on the losing side. The story is narrated by Sonya Kantor, the face of the Delegation, sentenced to life in the Aperture until given a chance to earn her freedom. Roth’s characterization of Sonya allows the reader to see the ongoing struggle of relearning under a new regime (the Triumvirate). The book also poses many ethical and moral questions as Sonya navigates society under the Triumvirate. As the book progresses, you find yourself asking if Sonya can ever truly be free in a world that forever sees her as Poster Girl.
I found the Poster Girl to be thought-provoking but not so overwhelming that the plot becomes secondary. While I found the book well-written and a page-turner, I did find the ending to be somewhat anticlimactic. Overall, I would recommend Poster Girl for readers who enjoyed Veronica Roth’s Divergent series and those who enjoy a mashup of genres.
Thank you, HarperCollins Canada for the ARC in return for an honest review.
