So this book took me a while to read. It was an audiobook, so I usually listened to it after dinner while taking my dog for a walk. It took a while because it was almost painful to read. It’s set in a dystopian future where all women have a bracelet with a word counter on their arms. They’re only allowed 100 words per day. If they go over their count, they get burned. Literally.
We get dropped into a family with one daughter and three sons. Of course the daughter has a word counter bracelet on. She’s young, so it’s all she’s known, and she’s almost afraid to talk at all. The mom is the main character, and she’s a neuro-linguist, so words and talking and how they relate to the brain are kinda her jam.
She gets recruited to work on a cure for the president’s brother who apparently had a brain injury and lost the ability to speak. She’s supposed to develop a serum to reverse the effects of the trauma and reinstate the person’s ability to talk. As a payment, she gets to take off her bracelet, and so does her daughter.
There’s a lot going on in this story. It’s terrifying how easily I believed that this world could be our world. I feel like we’ve traveled back in time with regards to women’s rights and equality during the orange menace, so this outcome seemed all too plausible.
Anyway, there is infidelity, science, murder, escape, intrigue, backstabbing, and heroics. It was a good story and like I said earlier, a little bit painful. It’s definitely worth reading though.