...
January 16, 2025

Novel Lives

Book Publicity, Book Reviews, And Author Interviews

Can’t Wait Wednesday Featuring The Meadows By Stephanie Oakes

Can’t Wait Wednesday

This meme is hosted at Wishful Endings, to spotlight and discuss the books we’re excited about that we have yet to read. Generally, they’re books that have yet to be released. It’s based on Waiting on Wednesday, hosted by the fabulous Jill at Breaking the Spine. If you’re continuing with WOW, feel free to link those up as well! Find out more here. Today I’m featuring The Meadows By Stephanie Oakes.


The Meadows By Stephanie Oakes

Summary Review

Category/Genre: YA Dystopian, LGBTQ

Release Date: September 12, 2023

Publisher: Dial Books/Penguin Randomhouse


The Meadows By Stephanie Oakes Summary

Goodreads summary for The Meadows By Stephanie Oakes:

A queer, YA Handmaid’s Tale meets Never Let Me Go about a dystopian society bent on relentless conformity, and the struggle of one girl to save herself and those she loves from a life of lies

Everyone hopes for a letter—to attend the Estuary, the Glades, the Meadows. These are the special places where only the best and brightest go to burn even brighter.

When Eleanor is accepted at the Meadows, it means escaping from her hardscrabble life by the sea in a country ravaged by climate disaster. But despite its luminous facilities, endless fields, and pretty things, the Meadows keeps dark secrets: its purpose is to reform students, to condition them against their attractions, to show them that one way of life is the only way to survive. And maybe Eleanor would believe them, except then she meets Rose.

Four years later, Eleanor and her friends seem free of the Meadows, changed but not as they’d hoped. Eleanor is an adjudicator; her job is to ensure her former classmates don’t stray from the lives they’ve been trained to live. But Eleanor can’t escape her past . . . or thoughts of the girl she once loved. As secrets unfurl, Eleanor must wage a dangerous battle for her own identity and the truth of what happened to the girl she lost, knowing if she’s not careful, Rose’s fate could be her own.

A raw and timely masterwork of speculative fiction, The Meadows will sink its roots into you. This is a novel for our times and for always—not to be missed.


What books are you looking forward to? How does The Meadows By Stephanie Oakes sound to you?

Verified by MonsterInsights