Book Review - Only Ever Yours

Hello my lovely bookworms! It’s lashing rain outside and I’ve been snuggled up in bed all week binge-watching Twin Peaks. Summer is treating me well methinks. I recently finished reading a very powerful book called Only Ever Yours by Louise O Neill who also wrote one of my favourite books ever, Asking For It. If you haven’t read Asking For It, what the hell is wrong with you?! Go read it! And if you’re thinking about picking it up, why not read my review of it here on my blog? Asking For It was one of the best books I read last summer so I couldn’t wait to jump into Louise O Neill’s other work. Enter Only Ever Yours.

This novel is definitely very different from Asking For It as its set in a dystopian society where women, also known as “eves”, are no longer born naturally but are created with the sole purpose of pleasing and being married off to men and to bear sons for these men. In this futuristic world, eves are bred, trained, and instructed in schools until they reach of the age of sixteen where they are chosen by men to become either a companion, a concubine, or a chastity. Companions act as wives to these men who then later on produce sons for their husbands and are usually placed in the top ranking system in the school, concubines are eves who become prostitutes, and chastises who are basically nuns who teach and instruct the eves at the school so they can be married off when they graduate.

The main goal of women in this story is to solely please men. Companions are tasked with sexually pleasing and birthing sons for the men they are married off to. Concubines are tasked with sexually pleasing men, and chastises are tasked with teaching future eves on how to please and marry a man. In the school, girls are taught by chastises to take care of their appearance and body weight so that they can be chosen at the graduating ceremony by men who visit the school to rank them based on their beauty. The main character, Frieda, among many other girls who attend the school, are obsessed with keeping their appearance and weight in check. Since it is their final year at the school, Frieda and the other eves are constantly struggling to remain as beautiful and thin as they possibly can so they can be selected to be a companion at the ceremony which is their main goal.

Frieda and the other eves that she goes to school with are all fixated on the idea of being “perfect”: having the perfect body, the prefect skin, the perfect hair, etc. The only thing that matters to them is how they look and how thin they are. They attend classes in the school where the chastises instruct them on how to stay beautiful, how to be companions, what food should/shouldn’t be putting into their bodies, and what drugs they should be taking to remain skinny. In this society, women are trained on having the perfect body and that being beautiful is the most important thing. Isabel, Frieda’s best friend, begins acting strangely and starts putting on weight and in turn starts distancing herself from Frieda which then disrupts their friendship. Much of the story revolves around Frieda trying to figure out why Isabel is behaving like this as well as attempting to compete with the gorgeous and popular Megan, who claims to be her friend but only seems to ignite jealousy, criticize, and put her and the other eves down.

This book is definitely a book that everyone should read because it focuses on a superficial society where body image and beauty rule over everything else. But I will say this: Only Ever Yours is not for the faint-hearted. It’s a very dark story that is very triggering in some places especially on the characters’ view of body image. People who suffer from say eating disorders, anorexia, bulimia, or who are fragile when it comes down to serious body image issues will find this book very hard to read. Many of the issues raised in this book such as weight, body image, and body shape are extremely intense and descriptive in parts and would be very triggering for people who are suffering or who have suffered from these issues. These are topics that many people, especially young girls, find hard to tackle with so this book wouldn’t be suitable for those trying to cope with body image related issues and eating disorders. Frieda is found judging herself and those around her endlessly for her weight and appearance, and it makes it difficult and horrible to read and would definitely affect those who find these issues hard to deal with in real life.

The caste system set out in this world that Louise O Neill has created was very intriguing and that was one of the main reasons I enjoyed this book so much. The eves are taught and trained to judge each other and criticize each other’s insecurities such as their body weight and how they dress in order to help improve the way they look so they will be pretty and skinny enough to be selected as companions. The society in which Frieda lives in is extremely harsh on women whether it be their weight, their appearance, or their sexual behaviour. I feel Only Ever Yours has to be one of the most frightening dystopian novels I’ve ever read just because how subtle it is in explaining how dark and real this world is and how easily it could happen. Many of the topics brought up in this book are serious topics going on in our society even today. Women are constantly worrying about the shape of their bodies, how they’re encouraged to judge other women based on their approach to sex and how they dress or how they look.

One of the negatives I have about this book is definitely the characters. I really disliked Frieda as a main character. I found her very foolish and naïve and they were times I wanted to slap her in her pretty little face. I thought she was incredibly weak-minded especially when it came down to peer pressure from the other girls she was “friends” with. But at the same time, I felt pity for her and Isabel and the other girls because of the messed up world they were living in. Absolutely HATED Megan because she was pretty much everything I hated about going to school as a teenager. There really wasn’t any character in the book that I liked but I could understand why they acted the way they did and why they made poor decisions simply because of the society they were forced to grow up in. From the day they were created, these girls are bred into becoming the perfect wife or the perfect mistress, and it’s horrible. This society is just a place that Frieda and these girls are simply used to even though the caste system and the way in which women are born and treated is wrong. These girls are just living their lives and doing all they can to survive because that is what they are designed to do. Only Ever Yours is a very impactful book and I do recommend reading it but it is very triggering especially when it comes down to body image and the whole perception behind beauty and perfection.

And that was my review for Only Ever Yours by Louise O Neill. I can see now why this book won the Booksellers YA Book Prize. It is truly an eye-opening read. Hope you all enjoyed my review. What books are you reading at the moment? Pop it down below in the comments! Have a wonderful day and I shall see you all very soon!