goodreads | Den sorte enkes by - Nicole Boyle Rødtnes (Reply)

Title: Den sorte enkes by (The City of the Black Widow)
Author: Nicole Boyle Rødtnes
Genre: YA, dystopian
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: 440
Date read: April, 2020

In the city of Viduana men and women live completely separated. The separation means peace in a world of chaos... but not everybody can adhere to the rules of separating the sexes.

Clara has just turned 18 and has to participate in the duty of procreation.
As a male, Silas is little more than a slave. He wants to change the city, but in order to gain influence he has to make an unbearable sacrifice.
Emma's mother dies, and she has to move in with her grandmother, the black widow, who rules over Viduana with an iron fist. But Emma hides a secret that could cost her her life.

Welcome to Viduana, where it is forbidden to fall in love, and every attempt at escape is punishable by death.

I started out by listening to the audiobook, but the narrator for Silas got on my nerves, so I dropped it and picked up the ebook instead - much better :-)

The story is very heavily influenced by "The Handmaid's Tale" (which the author acknowledges) but with some interesting twists, so it doesn't seem like a copycat story at all. I grew to care for the characters - Clara and Silas especially - and was very keen to see what would happen to them next. Generally speaking, I enjoyed it a lot, and had a hard time putting it down.

However, it had a few things working against it, which made me subtract a few stars.

First of all, it is clearly YA - not just in plot, but in writing style too. That doesn't usually bother me, but it used some very stereotypical YA tropes (illicit love, unrequited love, bad violent guy with no redeeming features whatsoever, teens having to take care of themselves etc.) that were just a tad eyeroll-inducing, because they are SO common.

Secondly, it is VERY obviously the first in a series. Fortunately the world-building was interesting, and as mentioned I really got to like Clara and Silas, so I didn't mind too much, but it's still rather telling when the scene is still getting established at 75%. I knew there was no WAY everything could be resolved before the book ended.

And it wasn't. Fortunately, I knew ahead of time that it's the first in a trilogy, so I was prepared, and wasn't quite as annoyed as I would otherwise have been. I do think I'll wait until all three books have been published, before reading the next one though.