The Breeders - Katie French

Genre: Dystopian YA
Rating: 5/5
I read this book as part of a reading challenge. I was not sure what to expect, but the premise seemed really interesting. In a dystopian society, girls are taken to a facility to pop out babies.
I was not prepared for how much I was going to love this book - the world, the dialogue, the characters, everything! (I gave it five stars despite the fact that there were quite a lot of spelling and grammar errors because I was THAT impressed with it). This was one I hated having to put down to do housework and such :-)
It's set in New Mexico, which happens to be where I live. I was familiar with the barrenness of the land, but since an accident that poisoned the earth, it's become even more barren. Society has devolved into gangs. Those who survive are tough and have to resort to killing and stealing at times. The main character, Riley, is in hiding with her family because of her value as a female. Any and all women are taken to a facility in Albuquerque and forced to stay there and have as many babies as possible in a "gilded cage." So, this means that any girls who are exposed as female are sold off or traded because everyone is so destitute. The whole book, Riley is fighting to stay away from the Breeder's facility and keep her loved ones safe. She meets a man, Clay, whom she's very conflicted about.

I absolutely loved the dialogue of this book. They talked like southerners and it was all very gritty and real. I like post apocalyptic because I find it interesting to see how people deal with finding food and water and just deal with everything in general. Clay's character had me guessing the entire time and Riley was easy to relate to. She was willing to be reckless and save herself and she didn't trust easily but she was ultimately a reasonable and kind person. There were many times throughout the book that she would make small observations about things, like the state of poverty that people were living in. She was a very compassionate person but she had to do some things that she regretted.

I was THRILLED when I saw that there were 4 more books!
*Walks off the buy the next book in the series*

Breakdown/Summary
Grammar/editing: Abysmal/Poor/Needs Work/Good/Excellent
This is definitely not the worst book that I have read as far as grammar, spelling, punctuation, and word usage is concerned. Many of the words that were misused were done so in the dialogue but there were a few instances of words being used in the wrong context that spell check didn't catch (Like, "peak" was used multiple times instead of "peek") Punctuation was decent. Some words were missing.

Violence: None/Mild/Medium/Heavy/Extreme: The main violence came from guns. There were a couple of people who suffered gunshot wounds. There were implications (but not descriptions) of torture and rape so some might find that content disturbing. The actual plot of forcing women to get pregnant and have babies was not really expounded upon but this could also be considered disturbing.

Profanity: None/Mild/Medium/Heavy/Extreme There were a few uses of the word "hell" and "bitch" but that was it. This book was quite clean compared to many out there.

Sexuality: None/Mild/Medium/Heavy/Extreme This would have gotten a "mild" rating because there is no actual sex - just kissing. However, rape is discussed many times.

Here are my affiliate links to main five books of the series (there are also multiple novellas):


Here is the link to the YA Dystopian readers challenge if anyone is interested in that: http://www.ripleypatton.com/monthly-giveaways/kindle-unlimited-giveaway/#sthash.XN1DxJlH.dpbs

ALL 10 books are available on Kindle Unlimited but The Breeders is free if you don't have KU ;-)