The Gender Game (The Gender Game Series, book 1)

By Bella Forrest

Blurb: 
A toxic river divides nineteen-year-old Violet Bates's world by gender. 

Women rule the East. Men rule the West. 

Welcome to the lands of Matrus and Patrus. 

Ever since the disappearance of her beloved younger brother, Violet's life has been consumed by an anger she struggles to control. Already a prisoner to her own nation, now she has been sentenced to death for her crimes. 

But one decision could save her life. 

To enter the kingdom of Patrus, where men rule and women submit. 

Everything about the patriarchy is dangerous for a rebellious girl like Violet. She cannot break the rules if she wishes to stay alive. 

But abiding by rules has never been Violet's strong suit.

When she's thrust into more danger than she could have ever predicted, Violet is forced to sacrifice many things in the forbidden kingdom ... including forbidden love. 

In a world divided by gender, only the strongest survive...

Review: 
This book starts off with a very heart destroying scene where Violet is trying to save her brother Tim by helping his escape from Matrus, because he had failed the testing and was sent to the mines in the North. From this scene onwards it takes a huge turn and carries on with Violet's life after seeing her brother fall into the toxic river.

I started this book in a huge reading slump and was enticed within the first two pages. At the start if the book there is only one main character who struggles with keeping her emotions under control and lashes out if something angers her or someone does something towards her family members. After living in several prisons over several years she is given an opportunity to redeem herself and all of her crimes forgotten if she completes one task successfully. This is when the second main character shows themselves and you get to see the true independent woman Violet is in an environment where she is supposed to be weak and follow men's orders. A third character shows themselves at this point too and is quite close to being classed as a main character because of the amount they are mentioned in the actual story.

These characters stories are well described and are in a great amount of detail for the first book. This leads you to become attached to them and want to keep reading to see what other things happen to them.

Throughout the whole book I felt I was constantly trying to guess what would happen next but I was always wrong, this kept me turning the pages and wanting to read more.

There was only one thing I disliked about this book and to be honest I'm just being picky, it was the ending! It was a proper kick in the teeth and pulled at all my heart strings. It made me want to read the next one straight away, which I did thankfully as it was already out so I feel sorry for the people who read it first and had to wait for the second book.

Overall I'd highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys an adventure, huge twists, love stories and a quick simple enjoyable fast paced book that you don't mind pulling at your heart strings. I'd recommend that you have some tissues near by and maybe a pillow to scream your anger into.

Favourite Character: Violet
Read: 12/07/18 - 15/07/18

5 stars out of 5 

Check out my review of Book 2: The Gender Secret

written by Sammie