Well, it wasn’t Wither. It’s actually pretty weird in that it wobbles back and forth a lot, and while it’s not good, it wasn’t in the ways I feared.

Most of the characters are women, but despite this they’re still sidelined for the love interest boy to an absurd degree, and only one woman at the very end is actually decent. The plot is a disaster, but it’s at least anti-sex slaves.

So, the basic idea here is that genetic engineering means owning girls is now okay despite them still being completely human in terms of genes, and the way the two are connected bothers me given there’s no lack of stupid stuff blamed on genetic engineering already. But the summary of the book seems to be her realizing she doesn’t want to be a pet and this is wrong, so I thought it was possible it wouldn’t be a reprise of Wither. Then the opening snippet of the book is all about how she’s sad to be a pet because hot boy true love, since that is clearly the biggest problem.

The story opens on the day she’ll be chosen by her owners from the “kennel” and given her name. The book really loves using dog words to hammer in the wrongness and it’s kind of ridiculous but whatever, at least the basic message is okay. (It also has the girls not know anything about sex despite the fact it’s a surety they’ll be raped, if not by their first owner then by their next, but okay fine YA, you’re not subtle and didn’t want to risk having the brainwashing involve why it’s totally okay to be raped.) Their trainer was a woman. Her buyer’s wife is irritated by the whole thing, but not in the sense she’ll do anything about it. The wife proceeds to spend the rest of the book angry about her husband getting a replacement pet after they had to get rid of the last one because he fucked it and it got pregnant, and one of the things they argue about is that she wants our narrator spayed to prevent this happening again – so she not only isn’t objecting about the fact her husband raped a girl, but she doesn’t care if he does it again so long as the neighbors don’t know.

Their younger daughter, Ruby, is just happy to have a playmate again, but while the early sections start off presenting her as upset about how Ella never learned to read or anything and treating her as a person, it never amounts to anything, she never seems to notice her friend won’t say anything’s wrong or ask for anything even after nearly drowning Ella because Ella didn’t say she couldn’t swim, and at one point when her dad says she can take Ella for a walk asks if she needs a leash.

Their older daughter appears very late in the book. She shows actual consideration for poor Ruby, but at the same time hates Ella and thinks Ella is just there to be another deliberate homewrecker like the last raped girl. (Saintly love interest boy defends Ella as not like the horrible, deceitful homewrecking monster the last raped girl was. He spends the entire book, in fact, insisting Ella is different than those other girls pets and even by the end I don’t think he sees anything wrong with the rest of the system, but it’s fine because it shows how special she is to him and isn’t that what really matters.)

One of their neighbors is anti-pet, but just terrifies Ella by insisting she run away right now instead of, say, telling her she can come to her if anything ever happens and she wants to leave. Then she tricks Ella into the car and drives off as Ella sobs, then dumps her at a place they ferry pets across the border, only it’s one further south (it’s illegal in Canada, so that’s where they have to take them), has to be done by appointment, and turns out to cost a lot of money. A woman is in charge there too, but just berates the neighbor, who acts terribly back, then after Ella is dumped there explains that they’re for profit only and kicks her out.

Later, Ella meets another pet, the first one besides the girls she was raised with, who’s a jerk to her. And even later, when she’s upset and wants to run away, she goes to the girl, who refuses and then turns her in to get her in trouble.

Finally, when Love Interest Boy decides to free her, his mom shows up and says she’s in favor of this, and Ella realizes it’s the mom who was sneaking her candies this whole time! Then Love Interest Boy says afterwards she was just so desperate to get rid of Ella, and it’s true she wanted the girl sterilized so when her husband inevitably raped her no one would know/because she thinks the raped girl seduced her husband because of working-uterus hormoes, so the other evidence suggests the candies were in the hopes it was true that her going off her pet food would make her behave badly so she could be gotten rid of. Oh, and the wife says the neighbor woman knew she would’ve helped but refused because she just felt like it, because women are just really awful in all ways in this.

It’s only when they try to cross the border and run to a random car for help that the woman there is actually wants to help without some narrative jerkness slapped on top and manages to not be totally ineffectual, even if it still doesn’t work.

Ella herself is just so incredibly boring. Okay, so she’s been raised to be an ornament, but supposedly she’s trained to be a good little songbird. But even when she’s stolen and wants to get back home, all she does is cower until she’s found by police, then even when she realizes the police are very nice, doesn’t even manage the amount of agency to point to her dog tag necklace and ask them to call her owner but just sits there, completely mute. She’s mute whenever anything major happens, really, despite supposedly being trained to say what people want to hear and supposedly desperate to make them like her and want to keep her. At various points she internally critiques the way the kids argue at the dinner table and don’t act interested enough in their dad’s boring monologues, but she never tries to tell them this later – she should think it’s a good way to help her friends avoid making their dad mad, and it’d then give the other characters a clue into her own behavior, while currently it’s either Love Interest just knowing what she really means or everyone missing it entirely.

Meanwhile, Love Interest Boy is vaguely decent except for the fact Ella has been trained to never say no to anyone and he never seems to realize that despite how incredibly fucking obvious it is she can never say no to anyone, so while by normal standards he doesn’t seem too pushy he comes off as oblivious to how much power he has over her, and he does little to nothing for her until the very end when his dad decides to sterilize her, and also is oblivious to the fact if she gets caught with him she’s the one who’ll suffer for it.

In fairness, it’s not like the rest of the male cast is any better, but they’re portrayed as terrible in a sort of force of nature way – they’re powerful and controlling and can hurt you. The women are spiteful, ineffectual, and hate each other.

All in all, distinctly unsatisfying and the love interest aspect was awful. The worst part is there’s an actual story with Ruby and Ella – Ruby doesn’t have any friends and is ignored by her family, but Ella is there with her, and when she takes Ella out, one of the other kids dumps her friend because Ella has a pet like she does and only the best people have pets. Ruby’s constantly criticized as ugly by her mother, but has no resentment toward Ella being perfect, and Ella in her part thinks Ruby’s appearance is beautiful too, in a wonderful dynamic that lasts about a chapter before Love Interest Boy monopolizes the rest of the plot. Ruby’s also much younger and has less experience with the world, so it’s less obvious to her how messed up all this is, unlike her brother who has girl friends his age as a comparison point for how messed up Ella and her treatment are.

Ruby could spend the book realizing that even though having Ella is good for her, and even though everyone says this is right, this isn’t good for Ella. (A good decision point would be Ruby wishing she was more perfect like Ella, and Ella offering to help Ruby get along with everyone, and then Ruby realizes that being perfectly loved by everyone means never having any self of your own.) Ruby’s also in a better position to recognize it’s wrong for her dad to rape a girl no bigger than she is, as apparently this is difficult given no one else managed it. She could also follow through on wanting to teach Ella things, since part of why Ella doesn’t want to leave is that she has no ability to take care of herself and indeed, ends this book still unable to read because Love Interest Boy never bothered to notice that was kind of a problem. As a bonus, Ella would then be escaping because she realized this was wrong, as opposed to running off because she wants to be with the boy. (Her prior “escape attempt” being only because she overheard Evil Older Sister saying she’d ruin the family.)