What the author basically does is reverse gender roles and circumstances - something which had the potential to be fascinating and powerful. Things that will help them serve the women in Koyanagar."
Men are also deemed unfit for law, politics and medicine they're only purpose in life is to father daughters. They erected a wall around their city and established a matriarchal society in which boys must compete in the Tests for a wife. After gender selection and female infanticide (a very real problem in India) caused a gender imbalance of 5 to 1 and girls became the target of rapists, the women of Koyanagar decided they could build a better society on their own. No wonderful glimpses into a culture so rarely seen in YA, no rich world-building. The entire book spans a few days and barely steps outside the world of the "Tests". I think, given the importance of the issues lying beneath this fictional story, the lens was too narrow. It's full of very important issues relevant to both India and the rest of the world.Īnd yet, the world-building is sketchy, the society poorly-conceived and the ending so. It has so much girl power but ultimately imparts the message that everyone is a human being deserving of respect, regardless of gender or anything else. It's a super quick read that I powered through in one sitting. I don't even know how to begin trying to describe how I feel about 5 to 1. Told from alternating points of view-Sudasa’s in verse and Contestant Five’s in prose-allowing readers to experience both characters’ pain and their brave struggle for hope. As the tests advance, Sudasa and Five thwart each other at every turn until they slowly realize that they just might want the same thing.
Five’s family wants him to escape by failing the tests. 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. Sudasa doesn’t want to be a wife, and Contestant Five, a boy forced to compete in the test to become her husband, has other plans as well. 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. 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.
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