**4.5 out of 5 stars** 
 They have told us that in order to succeed, we need to be good girls, we need to follow the rules, we need to look pretty and speak nicely and be pleasant. I've tried. I've waxed every last hair on my body. I have taken my pills. I have gone to bed hungry every night since I was four years old. I've done everything they have told me to do and here I am... and I don't know if it's good enough. 
 I wasn't always a feminist. 
 For the majority of my teenage years, I harbored a lot of internalized misogyny, showcased through my frequent usage of slut shaming, my solid beliefs that being a virgin was the primary indicator of my, and every other girl's, self-worth, and my obsession with what boys thought of me. It wasn't until I was around nineteen that I grew a brain and slowly let go of these feelings. 
 I've always been an avid reader. 
 But now, reading books that deal with feminist issues intrigues me. It opens my eyes to how our patriarchal society truly does harm both genders, not just women. It makes me yearn to live in a culture where girls don't have to look or behave a certain way to be looked at in respect. 
 Only Ever Yours by Louise O'Neill follows the story of freida, a girl living in a dystopian society and attending the School, a place where she has learned how to be the perfect "companion" to men. At this School, "what do men want?" is the question that all these girls ask themselves on a daily basis. Girls are only concerned with one thing: their looks, particularly their weight, which is tracked on a daily basis and used in the weekly rankings that the "chastities" (women who, for one reason or another, weren't picked to be "companions" or "concubines") post for all the School to see. 
 The author has said in interviews that Only Ever Yours is a bit of A Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood mixed with Mean Girls. I did notice similarities between this novel and the aforementioned "inspirations," and normally that would irritate me. With this book, on the other hand, it just seemed like O'Neill picked elements from A Handmaid's Tale and Mean Girls and molded them into something that seemed utterly original. 
 Only Ever Yours deals with, from my perspective, two huge feminist issues: the obsession that our culture has with Western beauty standards, and the rigid restraints that our society puts on women. For example, the girls at the School are taught from a very early age that crying isn't acceptable and is considered an "Unacceptable Emotion": which mirrors our culture's belief that crying is for "hysterical" women, not a valid emotion. 
 In this dystopian world that freida and her classmates live in, being mean or nasty or downright cruel isn't the worst thing you can be (in fact, in most cases it's encouraged), being fat is. A constant refrain that the girls hear on a daily basis is: 
 Fat girls are disgusting. Fat girls are lazy. No one will ever love a fat girl. 
 Men are so revered in this society, that women literally bow down to them in a variety of ways, particularly in pop culture references. Domestic violence against men doesn't exist, but against women? Absolutely. Women even joke about wanting to be hit by "yummy" men. 
 Regarding the subject of girls' virginity, there were some shocking parallels between our culture and theirs. Women in Only Ever Yours are literally bred to have sex with men, but yet there is still a shocking amount of slut shaming. Virginity is still one of, if not THE, most important parts of a girl's identity. One of the saddest lines from the novel about virginity was: 
 What little I am, I give myself up. 
 I will say that this book carries strong trigger warnings, particularly for self harm and eating disorders, so be aware of that before picking this novel up. 
 There are many feminist books out there that are waiting to be read by me, all dealing with important issues. But what I really loved about this one was that it's geared for a YA audience. I truly hope that more and more young teenage girls (and boys!) read Only Ever Yours and feel empowered to consider themselves feminists.