hate it. absolutely hate it. this is not a good book for many reasons but i will only briefly discuss them because i could go on about how much i loathe this book for hours.

firstly, the prose is so straightforward and simple. this made it very quick to read, but i didn't get anything out of it. like, when i read a book there's usually a couple of lines or passages that i'll underline because they left an impression on me. this didn't happen at all for the power.

secondly, the message of this book is not good. at all. whether this is an inadvertent result or not, the very obvious interpretation of the whole premise of the power is that women will never achieve equality without having superpowers. which, you know, is a pretty shitty message. not to mention the subsequent actions of the majority of women. this is not a feminist book. this book describes radical feminism. dangerous radical feminism.

and, i'm not saying this is completely factual, but i think if women were to get this power... our reaction wouldn't be so extreme? i mean, i get that power often leads to corruption but idk. feminists just want equal rights? feminism isn't about women being superior to men. in fact, feminism benefits men because the patriarchy targets all of us. that's just how i see it though.

also - alderman failed to mention other genders? it was just 'women' vs 'men.' and i'm pretty sure she was only talking about cisgender people. so. idk, the fixation on only those genders was kinda weird to me. like bro i'm just trying 2 vibe i don't have a gender i wanna be like a walking moss covered rock.

thirdly, what's with all the gratuitous graphic scenes? this links back to my first point, in the way that having all of these nasty descriptions of triggering & disturbing things felt like it was solely for 'shock' factor, if that makes sense. like there were so many of them that it became gratuitous in a way. i ended up skipping them because i didn't want to be, you know, triggered by them. it just made the reading experience very unpleasant.

0 stars for bad writing, bad message and giving me more trauma.