Unwind (Unwind, #1)

Unwind by Neal Shusterman is the beginning of a dystopian series that explores the question of what the world might be like if abortion debate was resolved by banning the termination of pregnancy, but replacing it with “unwinding” or a retroactive abortion where parents may have a child aged 13-17 surgically taken apart and redistributed to various organ recipients. Let me start out by saying that I think the premise is unrealistic to the point of absurdity. No one, neither Pro-Life nor Pro-Choice, would think this was an acceptable situation. Nor would anyone reasonably consider a person taken apart like this to still be alive. The foundational concept for the book doesn't work for me. Additionally, as I read the book I was reminded that I really don't read a lot of YA and maybe there's a reason for that. The plot and characters developed rapidly, relationships escalating to intimate friendships at a pace that seemed totally unbelievable to me. Also the way the book is written, the prose itself, seemed very simple at times. I'm not this book's primary audience, and maybe when I was a teenager I would have loved it, but I think this book is unrealistic and mostly mediocre. Yet, there were a couple of things Shusterman managed to do well though. I thought the book did a good job of including the importance of life AND choice. I never felt like this book exclusively sided with the Pro-Life or Pro-Choice crowd, even if the scenario presented in the book was unambiguously monstrous. Perhaps the author's main message is that political hatred can drive us all to abandon our principles out of spite, blind us to our own evil, and even reach the point of absurdity. Reading this book in 2021 in Texas, something about that rang a little bit true to me. Overall I didn't love this book, and I don't know if I'll read the next book in the series, but I did get something out of it. For that reason ⭐️⭐️⭐️