Poster Girl

May 1, 2022

"Poster girl" for a totalitarian regime in the Seattle-Portland region that has since fallen, Sonya has been imprisoned for ten years but could earn her freedom if she can find a missing girl taken from her parents under the previous regime. Successful YA author Roth's first adult novel, Chosen Ones, hit the New York Times best sellers list.

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May 30, 2022
After the collapse of a tyrannical government, a woman’s search for a missing girl leads her to uncover a chilling family secret in this sluggish dystopian mystery from bestseller Roth (Chosen Ones). The Delegation ruled the Seattle-Portland-South Vancouver megalopolis with an iron fist, keeping its citizens under constant surveillance using Insight, an ocular implant that tracks the wearer’s every action. Ten years after the fall of the Delegation, Sonya Kantor, a former poster girl for the regime who’s been imprisoned for the role she played in its propaganda machine, is given the opportunity to earn her freedom by locating a missing girl, Grace, who was stolen from her parents by the Delegation. As Sonya searches, she struggles to navigate the much-changed, post-Delegation world and, as her family’s dark past comes to light, she’s forced to reckon with the repercussions of her parents’ actions and confront her own shifting morals. The worldbuilding is fascinating, but Roth only scratches the surface, with more time spent developing Sonya’s life in prison than exploring the outside world or the ramifications of using Insight. This lack of depth extends to the protagonist; though readers will appreciate Sonya’s journey to self-awareness, her lack of interiority makes her difficult to invest in. This won’t go down as one of this talented author’s better works. Agent: Joanna Volpe, New Leaf Literary.

August 1, 2022
Sonya Kantor is the Poster Girl--her face appeared on propaganda posters for the Delegation. But now that the Delegation has fallen to the Triumverate, she lives in a prison apartment. She expects to spend the rest of her life there until Alexander Price, a low-level Triumverate bureaucrat and the older brother of the boy she was to be engaged to, offers her a way out: find Grace Ward, an illegal second child who was taken from her family by the Delegation ten years before. Sonya's Insight--brain-implanted tech--doesn't work anymore, so she has to investigate the old-fashioned way. She first makes contact with a hacker who wants Sonya to get her in touch with the Analog Army, terrorists or freedom fighters, depending on who's asking. But soon the Triumverate wants Sonya off the case, and Alexander doesn't know why. Dour Sonya becomes a character worth rooting for as she discovers the truth about her past, and a hint of romance amid the danger gives the story additional stakes. Roth (Chosen Ones, 2020) has spun an interesting premise into a taut futuristic thriller.

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Starred review from August 15, 2022
Ten years after a sinister government collapsed, a young woman searches for a girl who was kidnapped by that regime. For most people, life under the Delegation meant oppressive surveillance by the Insight, a mandatory biotech implant that monitored their every move and rewarded or punished them based on a strict code of conduct. But Sonya Kantor, whose father was an important Delegation official, reveled in perfecting her behavior based on the Delegation's requirements, even posing for a propaganda poster. When the Delegation is replaced by the Triumverate, a supposedly humane new democracy, Sonya and all the other remaining Delegation loyalists are locked away in the Aperture--a walled-off section of the city where people aren't locked in cells but don't have much in the way of creature comforts, either. One day, 10 years after the uprising, an old friend comes to find Sonya and offers her a deal from the Triumverate: If she can find a girl who was kidnapped by the Delegation, she'll be allowed to move out of the Aperture and rejoin society. One could imagine a dystopian novel set during the uprising that toppled the Delegation in which someone like Sonya is a villain, righteously imprisoned when a new government is formed. But Roth isn't interested in easy victories or happily-ever-afters. Instead, Sonya grapples with the inevitable failure of even the most optimistic governments, the risk that exciting and helpful new technologies can be used for evil, and the responsibility she still bears for who she was and what she did during the Delegation's heyday. The novel manages to be an elegant social commentary without resorting to preachiness, and even the most cynical readers will be as surprised as Sonya when they reach Roth's big reveals about the depths of the Delegation's depravity. A wonderfully complex and nuanced book, perfect for readers who grew up on dystopian YA.

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Starred review from July 1, 2022

Sonya Kantor, formerly the face of the totalitarian regime that once ruled the Seattle-Portland megacity, has been relegated to a locked ghetto with all of that dictatorship's remaining adherents. The Delegation controlled the behavior of everyone who lived under its all-seeing eye, but Sonya and her family were true believers. Sentenced to life imprisonment, all she believes in now is survival. When an enemy offers her a chance at freedom if she investigates the disappearance of one young girl, she agrees, but doing so will expose the true nature of her beliefs, her family, and her own complicity in crimes that neither she nor the current administration want to see the light of day. While the actions of surveillance states are chilling, it's Sonya's journey that carries the reader through this walk into dark places, as the deeper she looks into the mystery, the more is revealed about her and her family's crimes. VERDICT Roth's (Chosen Ones) latest is highly recommended for readers of dystopian fiction, lovers of Philip K. Dick's thought-police science fiction, and anyone who wants to see how far "If you see something, say something" can be led astray.--Marlene Harris

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