Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of Firstborn: A Novel

Firstborn: A Novel
Firstborn: A Novel
Author: Lorie Ann Grover
Genre: Teen & Young Adult
Book Type: Hardcover
reviewed on + 380 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2


Summary:
Tiadone is born into a world where only men are important. When Tiadone's parents have a girl, they choose to label her man instead of leaving her to die. Because of this, she is grown up as if she were male. She is trained to act like a man and taught that she should be a man, regardless of her female qualities. According to the society, she is male and she should act that way. As it comes time for her to prove herself as a man, she is faced with challenges that shake her belief in everything. She questions politics, religion, her body, her hopes of finding love, and her belief that she really need to pass as a boy. Of course, grappling with all of this leads her to wonder if she should leave or stay and whether to fight for who she really is or play by the rules her society has set.

My thoughts:
I'm getting ready for a whole bunch of complaints and "not helpful" votes. I just didn't like this book. It was okay, but really not well organized. Grover has some excellent descriptions, but they often come after you've already decided what something is for yourself or why it may be important. It's like she wrote something and then realized that she should have explained it. I really struggled with this because I ended up questioning something and then just hoping i would be explained at another date. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. There are events that happen that are never explained. This was the main reason I couldn't enjoy the novel as much as I wanted to. If someone would have just gone through with a red pen and circled passages and then moved them to the exact event they explained, and then wrote a big "WHY DID THIS HAPPEN" on several others, then it would have been a much better book. The bones are there, it just isn't quite finished yet.