Book Review: 5 to 1 - Holly Bodger

Title: 5 to 1
Author: Holly Bodger
Pub Date: May 12th, 2015
Publisher: Knopf BFYR
Page Count: 224

In the year 2054, after decades of gender selection, India now has a ratio of five boys for every girl, making women an incredibly valuable commodity. Tired of marrying off their daughters to the highest bidder and determined to finally make marriage fair, the women who form the country of Koyanagar have instituted a series of tests so that every boy has the chance to win a wife.

Sudasa doesn’t want to be a wife, and Kiran, a boy forced to compete in the test to become her husband, has other plans as well. Sudasa’s family wants nothing more than for their daughter to do the right thing and pick a husband who will keep her comfortable—and caged. Kiran’s family wants him to escape by failing the tests. As the tests advance, Sudasa and Kiran thwart each other at every turn until they slowly realize that they just might want the same thing.

This beautiful, unique novel is told from alternating points of view—Sudasa’s in verse and Kiran’s in prose—allowing readers to experience both characters’ pain and their brave struggle for hope.

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An uneven distribution where the writing was phenomenal and the plot needed serious work caused this novel to be a bust. - Nova @ Out of Time

I've never really read books that feature verse. Now that I have, I realize two very important things: I love the style but it tends to lack in plot. While reading, the part with the verse was pretty and told a story but didn't really make things feel like a concrete story. I knew things were happening but there was no showing of any kind - all of it a mix of telling and the character's feelings. Luckily, we had parts that were told in prose that were what filled the gaps. Unfortunately, it made me realize that this story is a very basic one.

We don't really get to know any of the characters. We just know that Five is good and her cousin is not. Plus, we don't ship incest here at Out of Time. Back to the review, I felt like everyone was so flat. Even the main character, with her many emotions, fluctuated from having the most character to the least.
I think this is because we get right in her head and it feels like a monologue. This, "all about me" idea is good in some situations but made everything so wrong in this book.

In addition, the plot itself was very basic. I didn't really understand why it was so quick. There was infodumping at some stages but that eventually passed. What kind of annoyed me was how it was about a series of tests that the boys have to go through but most of it was in Sudasa's perspective. Yes, I understand, you're having a lot of problems choosing a husband but those boys will die if they don't get chosen. Who has it worse?

Something I did enjoy, however, was the culture. I'm not really knowledgeable on Indian culture but what I read was different and I really enjoyed it. It's different from the cookie-cutter American dystopian where no other country seems to exist. I loved the names of their food, the materials in their cloths and even the way they behaved screamed "different" to me. It's interesting to read about a culture that isn't your own, even though in a few ways, it's fictional.

Overall, this was a beautiful book that only fell flat because of the plot and characters. While the actual story-spinning wasn't the best, Bodger has the talent of a writer some could only hope to achieve and I can see that ability getting her very far.

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