Published Date: August 21, 2018
Publishing Co.: Berkley
Pages: 336
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Whenever there is a novel about the subjugation of women, it almost always immediately draws comparisons to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Once you actually read it however, the only commonality is the subjugation of women. Vox begins as an almost complete rip off of Atwood’s tale. Replace the same concepts with different names, slight variations here and there but add a wrist device that counts women’s words, subtract the handmaids andsplash on a massive helping of current society references and you have the major workings of Vox. If you’ve never read or watched The Handmaid’s Tale, you’ll probably be able to read it without much fuss.
I had a hard time finding much respect for the main character, Jean Mc-whatever, I’ve already forgotten. This is largely due to her cheating on her husband and this is probably a personal point of view preventing me from connecting. If you don’t love someone anymore, woman up and break it off. Cheating is weak. Now, you might be thinking, “But she has to depend on a man in this new society!” Sure, that’s true but she’s basically just runs from one man to another for protection anyway.
This was very closely going to be a one star read but the ending did drag me and keep me interested in how the story falls out. It was cleaned up fairly neatly but when I sit back and think about it, I wouldn’t really care whether the story had a good or bad ending for the characters. There are some important messages to society in this so it gets points for that but I was largely unimpressed.
cupcakesandmachetes 
I never really wanted to read this. I’m sort of done with the “subjugation of women” theme, unless an author can really bring something new to the table.
It was my book club selection for December, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have read it on my own.
Ah, someone else who thought this was poorly done. Folks tried to give me review trouble on Goodreads. I am glad they enjoyed this book but I stand by me take on it. Close to yers. Arrr!
x The Captain
I’m just waiting for those GR haters to roll over my review as well. I’ll never understand trying to change someone’s experience reading book but yelling at them about how wrong they are. In fact, it usually makes me hate the book even more lol. Cheers!
Still haven’t finished this one yet. Once I breezed past the halfway mark I seem to have dragged to a dead stop. Not even really sure why. I haven’t read The Handmaid’s Tale yet, but based off what you’ve told me about it I can see your point. I’ve found Vox to be an easy read and liked it so far but haven’t been in love with it. I have a hard time really getting into a book when I don’t really like any of the characters and that is pretty much my biggest issue with this one so far. I feel like it could be a lot better if I actually felt invested in the characters.
I think that it also doesn’t help that it’s based on the entire political climate in the US right now. It’s the extremes of both sides and we deal with that shit every single day now.