This book has been shortlisted for the YA Book Prize.
I finished reading this book last week, I have been thinking about it ever since. I couldn’t write this post until now. To be honest I didn’t know where to start from.
I must say that while I was reading it I was expecting something else, maybe the kind of heroine that I am used to in YA books. So, if you are expecting a strong character, a leader, this is not your book.
Only Ever Yours is, somehow, a reflexion about our society. Ok, here it is the plot:
freida and isabel have been best friends their whole lives. Now, aged sixteen and in their final year at the School, they expect to be selected as companions – wives to wealthy and powerful men.
The alternative – life as a concubine – is too horrible to contemplate.
But as the intensity of the final year takes hold, the pressure to be perfect mounts. isabel starts to self-destruct, putting her beauty – her only asset – in peril.
And then into this sealed female environment, the boys arrive, eager to choose a bride.
freida must fight for her future – even if it means betraying the only friend, the only love, she has ever known…
This book is a dystopia that is related to reality showing how our image it has become something essential, especially for teenage girls. Our society is becoming very shallow and only cares about appearance. Girls are taught that in order to be successful, they have to be the prettiest. And boys have more freedom in this aspect. freida (I am not misspelling, in the book, only the male characters have the right of having capital letters in their names, which is an intelligent way of showing us since the beginning that boys are worthier than girls, girls are pretty much interchangeable) our main character, is a follower. She doesn’t have a strong personality, she only wants to be accepted, no matter what the cost is. She is very pretty, perfect, as she has been designed to be. So maybe because she has weak personality and is full of flaws inside it is easier to relate to her and suffer through her insecurities with her. Somehow, she has been left by herself and freida is a mirror for every teenage girl that feels left out, who doesn’t find its place or belong there, and thinks very poorly about herself. Fitting is very important in our society, and sometimes we do things that we don’t agree with for the sake of “friendship”.
Only Ever Yours, not only tackles the theme of popularity, loneliness, and empty vessels that some people are/become. It is not only a show of how our society is punishing physical flaws in women, but not in men. It is also showing real struggles that girls are suffering nowadays, their weaknesses and addictions and why sometimes people choose not to feel anything. How not everybody is able to cope.
The characters are very well described, you almost feel that you know them. However, I couldn’t get some of them. isabel (freida’s best friend) was a little bit disappointing, I didn’t get why she acts like that, and I might have appreciated a few chapters from her point of view to understand her better.
Overall, it is an amazing book that will leave your mind spinning for a while, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
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