At first, I worried that this book would be a pale cousin of The Handmaid’s Tale, and it bears more than a passing similarity to that dystopia. But after the first third, the book turns away from that toward a more conventional mystery story full of conveniently placed red herrings and missed cues. It felt very much to me like we were checking off milestones on an outline, and it’s missing a lot of the detail and gravitas I would expect because everything resolves so neatly, much of it in an epilogue where the action happens “offscreen.” The readers’ guide revealed that the book was written in just two months, and that explained a lot for me; it’s written well enough, but it feels rushed and conventional rather than truly terrifying or groundbreaking. I would have loved to read the version of this story that took two years to write.