Perfect for:
- People who want to relive the early 2010s when dystopias were the main attraction (you know, back when we weren’t living in one)
- Anyone who has never read about someone who is intersex
- Fans of “on-the-run” narratives
Review:
Altogether, this story had a lot of potential but unfortunately, it didn’t follow through. As we follow Pip take in a stray and get captured only to land on what might be the creepiest farm (besides the one in Riverdale and sadly not with a hot leader like Chad Michael Murray) with loads of predators and then trying to escape from there only to be caught by a tiger – we never really get to an “endpoint” with these characters. Of course the stakes are high seeing that people are being hunted on the streets after the virus has nearly killed all of the population and the rest is just trying to get by. Yet we never learn how many people are still alive or how some survived and others didn’t. There is also no explanation as to how they are going to rehabilitate the world or solution as to how they’re going to survive. Sure, Pip and her friend Whistler scrounge up stuff from vacated stores; and there are people trying to grow their own food and livestock but there just was never a glimpse of anything beyond the scope of this town.
I guess what this story lacked most was purpose. True, Pip’s goal is to save Iris and keep her away from harm but beyond that, we never really learn what will happen to them even if they were to get to a safe point. Are they going to try to come up with an antidote for the virus? Are they going to have to repopulate the planet? The ending is very open and doesn’t answer a lot of questions; if anything, it adds more. After spending 95% of the book watching Pip and her friends stumble from one calamity into the next, there should have been some form of closure, considering this is a standalone.
Nevertheless, the representation is what drew me in from the beginning and kept me flipping those pages as we learn throughout the story, Pip, our protagonist, is intersex. I’ve never read about an intersex bisexual woman before and after this book, I wish there were more literature with intersex individuals as the protagonist. Pip was fierce and relentless and never stopped fighting for those she loved and for her right to be herself. The parts of the novel in which Pip talked about her struggles as a child and growing older, realising that she was different and though her parents decided to raise her as a boy despite her conviction that she was a girl and how that affected her, were by far my favourite parts of the novel. All the struggles she had to face, the hiding she has to take part in in order to survive in this dystopian world were far more interesting than the actual, you know, dystopia to me. There’s also a bit of romance mixed into this story and while it lacked tension and build-up, I still prayed that Pip and Fly would find their way to each other.
Though the execution left a lot to be desired, I did enjoy the overall storyline and would recommend it for the representation alone – and for Iris, because she’s a sweetheart.
The Names We Take is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers as of May 19th 2020.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
Never leave someone behind: it’s a promise easier made than kept, especially when seventeen-year-old Pip takes the headstrong twelve-year-old Iris under her protection in the wake of an earth-shattering plague.
After an unspeakable tragedy, the duo must navigate the nearly unrecognizable remains of Spokane, facing roving slave traders, merciless gangs―and worse. Pip and Iris soon meet Fly, a stubborn and courageous older girl, and as the three grow closer and their circumstances grow more perilous, they must also grapple with their own identities in this cruel new world. Pip’s vow to never leave someone behind may have made survival more difficult for her, but this promise could also be the key to finding meaning in the ashes of what came before.
