A Girl Called Fearless by Catherine Linka follows Avie, a girl living in a world where women are scarse after a hormone caused women of childbaring age to get cancer and die. The paternalist movement has slowly taken over and girls are kept under lock and key with their every move controlled by the men in their lives and they then are put on contracts and sold into marriages they have no choice about. When Avie's father signs her contract into marriage with a controling paternalist politician Avie has to decide if she's going to run.
I really enjoyed this book and I didn't expect to. The dystopian premise is believeable and well crafted (and for once we've got a heroine who remembers what it was like when things were normal). The reader could believe that under similar circumstances powerful men would do everything they could to control women and keep them in the home under the guise of protection. The romance worked well (with no insta love and no triangle) and I really felt the love between Avie and Yates. There were also several fantastic side characters who I cared about and all had believable intentions in the way they reacted to the world. I sped through the book, finishing it quickly and remained interested throughout.
Appropriateness: Sex and purity is a big theme in the book, there is no sex but the characters virginity is talked about a lot along with the character being checked to confirm that she's still a virgin. I would reccomend this book to readers 14+ and it would be a great one to talk about with girls (and boys) with why equality for all is so important.
