I wanted to love this book but I had a few issues with it. Firstly, including 50 women’s stories meant that there was little detail in any of them. I would have much preferred 10 or 20 more in depth accounts.
I enjoyed the humorous, casual writing style in the beginning but after a few stories it became quite annoying and seemed quite forced. I’m guessing it was meant to be relatable but in some cases it actually seemed to belittle and downplay the importance and seriousness of these stories.
I also had an issue at the unsubtle “man hating” expressed in this book. I completely agree that these women’s struggles are overwhelmingly maddening but I don’t agree that insulting individual men for the society they live in is helpful, or that generally referring to men using derogatory terms is fair. I am concerned that this impacts the credibility of the book’s important content and does nothing to convince non-feminists to open their minds and see the true injustice affecting women across the world daily.

The Gender Rebels audiobook was a fun, easy listen for me. My only complaint is that I expected it to be a little more intellectual rather than general summaries making up each biography section. That was an assumption I made though rather than an actual anything actually negative about the book.I still think the book is definitely worth a listen or read. I would just recommend it more to younger people looking to get started in feminist and queer history rather than people who may have heard a lot of these stories before or who are looking to dive a little deeper. The narration was entertaining, and it was a nice touch to have multiple narrators as it helped delineate between stories.

DNF I couldn't get past the author reducing being a woman to having a vagina and a few other remarks that got my hackles up. It's obviously meant to be a comedic telling of all these gender rebel's stories, but it was definitely falling flat for me.

I wanted to like this book. Gender rebels? My genderfluid heart was ready for this one. I received the audiobook version (thank you NetGalley for the ARC). I couldn’t concentrate on the interesting gender rebels because there were too many distracting sentences. It wasn’t the informal use of language, but rather the digressions from the main topic that bothered me. I want to learn more about each of the people in this book but from a different source.

I liked the concept of the book but not the writing style. It kind of felt like Drunk History but in book form - a little bit flippant and often too cutesy. Don't get me wrong - I like Drunk History but what makes it funny is the visual concept. I think it's great that Anneka Harry is raising awareness of obscure historical figures but I was not a fan of the writing style itself (at least not for this type of subject matter) but I credit her for originality and covering unique subject matter.

Concept: 10/10
Execution: 1/10

I’m often critical of these whistle stop tour books. The two stars are because some incredible humans were covered in the book.

Less than average writing, not as in depth as I wanted and lacking style whilst being style over substance. Not a good look.

Good bibliography! Lots of good jump off points into other sources to look further into the rebels named.

Full of simplistic woke and inaccurate characterisation.