Name: A Girl Called Fearless
ISBN: 9781250039293

Catherine Linka

Growing up in Los Angeles after tainted food kills millions of childbearing-age women, teen Avie Reveare endures widespread overprotectiveness before being contracted to marry a wealthy older politician, an arrangement that compels her to flee to Canada, away from a boy she has come to love. A first novel.

A Novel

A Girl Called Fearless

Reyna Wren

I loved the premise, it was scarily realistic. I cried within the first fifty pages. It went a bit downhill from there for me, unfortunately.
Unlike many other reviewers, I liked that Avie didn't want to join the rebellion at first. I thought it was neat to see a different angle, one of a character who just wanted a normal life.

I liked all of the side characters, they were complex and interesting, and they were real enough that you could imagine them having their own stories outside of what we saw throughout the book. They all had their own motivations, and the only one I was a bit disappointed with was the love interest.

The only things I didn't like, were how quickly the love progressed, although I was mostly willing to look past that, since they did know each other their entire lives, and how much focus it got. I'm sorry, but I never really felt that invested in the romance, or the plight of the love interest.

Other bad things:
- The awkward almost love triangle (it wasn't nearly as frustrating as a traditional love triangle, though); 
- The ending was a bit too easy;
- I didn't believe much in the character development. Some of the emotion of Yates' backstory wasn't as explored as I felt it could have been to deliver an emotional pull. Also, Avie pretty much told, rather than showed, her character arc. She almost seemed to diminish before she tells us she started to progress as a character.

But seriously guys. The SIDE CHARACTERS. THEY WERE MY FAVOURITE. Sparrow was so (view spoiler)[
  heartbreaking
 (hide spoiler)] riveting, Magda was mysterious, and all of Magda's girls and the people she meets later on in the novel were so interesting! And the novel didn't shy away from having LGBT characters as well, and yet the novel didn't focus on that one facet of them, but treated them like people (unlike so many other LGBT YA novels I've read... *shudders*)

Aveline frustrated me countless times with her carelessness. (view spoiler)[She rebelled in spaces she should have been luring people into a false sense of security, for example, with Hawkins. And when she finally tried to help the rebellion effort, she didn't even review her location before sending out the video! ARG. (hide spoiler)]

Lastly, I am not a huge distopia fan, but this one still won me over. :)

So yeah, if you can look past the over emphasis on the love story, and how annoying frustrating careless Avie is, this is a really interesting book.

Jessica Nottingham

So, a book with a very pretty cover showed up at my door unannounced. It shouted A Girl Undone at me from that cover, and enticed me to read it. Alas, what this book didn't tell me was that it was a sequel in disguise. So, of course, I dutifully went to the library and checked out the first book in this series, A Girl Called Fearless. I was intrigued. The story promised me a dystopian world rife with male power. A world where women were objects, instead of people. The feminist in me was overjoyed. The reader who has been burned by many a dystopia lately, was not. Now that I've actually finished this book, I'm sad to say that I'm still a fence-sitter. While this definitely wasn't exactly what I was hoping for it to be, it wasn't too bad of a story either. Settle in, and I'll explain.
 
I think the number one thing that first threw me off, was Avie. Our main character, Avie is a very privileged and sheltered young woman. This means, of course, that she truly believes that her life is the absolute worst, and that the world is hell bent on making her miserable. To be honest, I wasn't all that happy with her at the beginning of this story. I felt for her, to be sure. No woman wants to be owned, and especially by someone as cold and menacing as the man who wants her. However, the more that Avie prolonged her decision, the more that she whined and didn't act, the more I wanted to throw something at her. I just wanted her to choose. Good or bad, I just wanted her to choose.
 
Luckily, as the story went on, Avie and I understood one another more. The more of the outside world she was exposed to, the more her eyes were opened to the lives of others. When she finally started to realize how selfish she was being, and quit being so whiny, we got along loads better. If only, and you probably all knew this was coming, there hadn't been that pesky romance to get in the way of her growth.
 
See, A Girl Called Fearless pulls very heavily from the whole Romeo and Juliet trope. Two people who fate tries to keep apart, struggling mightily to be together. I'm not against romance. I welcome it, if it feeds the story line. In this case, Yates and Avie never felt real to me. Yates felt like an easy way to show that Avie had to give up so much to finally do something about her life. I'm sure she loved him, but it didn't show in the writing. Instead, it just fed the concept of her being selfish. So many times she made decisions that benefited her, and put others at risk. It drove me mad.
 
So what kept me reading on? Mainly, the fact that there is so much action pushing this book forward. The world itself really intrigued me as well. Catherine Linka leaves things on the precipice. Avie's who universe is on the brink of collapse. Who wouldn't want to know what happens next? Yes, I will be reading the next book. I only hope our lovely heroine maintains her character development, and gets to kicking some ass.

Ashley shackelford

Jessica Guht

An Indie Next Pick! Avie Reveare has the normal life of a privileged teen growing up in L.A., at least as normal as any girl's life is these days. After a synthetic hormone in beef killed fifty million American women ten years ago, only young girls, old women, men, and boys are left to pick up the pieces. The death threat is past, but fathers still fear for their daughters' safety, and the Paternalist Movement, begun to "protect" young women, is taking over the choices they make. Like all her friends, Avie still mourns the loss of her mother, but she's also dreaming about college and love and what she'll make of her life. When her dad "contracts" her to marry a rich, older man to raise money to save his struggling company, her life suddenly narrows to two choices: Be trapped in a marriage with a controlling politician, or run. Her lifelong friend, student revolutionary Yates, urges her to run to freedom across the border to Canada. As their friendship turns to passion, the decision to leave becomes harder and harder. Running away is incredibly dangerous, and it's possible Avie will never see Yates again. But staying could mean death.From Catherine Linka comes this romantic, thought-provoking, and frighteningly real story, A Girl Called Fearless, about fighting for the most important things in life—freedom and love.

A Girl Called Fearless A Novel

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