Well hello to you my reader chums! Ever since reading Vox by Christina Dalcher, I fell in love with her work, the way she wrote and her in-depth thought-provoking plotlines. To me, it was genius writing and that's why I was super excited to read her book Q. I was expecting good things and I can honestly say, it lived up to every expectation.

If you're looking for a book that'll keep you on edge and is thought-provoking, here is my full review of Q by Christina Dalcher.

This post contains affiliate links but all thoughts are my own.

Plotline

The plotline follows a society, designed to make things fairer, an education system that will benefit everyone. All of these things are in aid of progress. This is what Elena Fairchild believes as a teacher in one of the government's elite schools for children with high Q scores as she witnesses the benefits first-hand. However, when her daughter scores lower than expected and is taken away, Elena follows her to a government institute. When she's there, she questions everything and how perfection comes at a terrible price.

Characters and relationships

The characters in this book were very interesting as their personalities were very strong, either one way or the other in terms of opinions. The protagonist Elena, I grew more to like throughout the novel as I got to see the real side of her, the rawness of her feelings of motherhood and really, her journey into the life she has now. She became relatable in the way she described things and her emotions were real, I could feel them jumping off the page. Elena's husband Malcolm, I despised from the beginning for many reasons. He is one of the people behind the new rulings of the 'perfect' schooling programme and honestly, I could see how set in his ways, he didn't even care about standing by his own daughter, by putting the system first. He came across as heartless, arrogant and simply, a horrible man. He is definitely the villain of the novel who didn't seem to love his wife and kids the way he should unless they were perfect and stuck to his rules.

Their kids Anne and Freddie were completely different, Freddie was more of a free spirit and Anne, was very studious and focused on getting the top grades. I sympathised with Freddie a lot as she was so young and innocent, and wanted to just be a kid but this horrid testing system in place means she was sent away from her home to a scary place that didn't give her the care she deserved. Anne very much had a strong attitude and sought her father's validation in a way, I admire that as she just wanted to work hard, it's sad because of that Malcolm pushed his other daughter away.

Another interesting character was Elena's grandma Oma. Her parents and Oma were very against the whole school system and pleaded for Elena and the kids not to attend and move back home with them. But what's more interesting is how Oma tells Elena of her past in Nazi Germany and how this new regime is exactly what's happening there. Everyone thinks Oma is losing the plot a bit in her old age, but everything she says has an honest light to it.

Overall thoughts

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It had a combination of a thrilling plotline, exciting characters and a fast pace about it as I really wasn't sure which way the ending would go. I love how the author used parts of history in curating the story as it gave the plot a sad but scary truth, which in a terrifying way made it more real. Because of that, the message of the whole book was incredibly powerful and shocking and I think we can all learn a lot from it if I'm honest. It's one of those books I didn't want to put down.

Ending

The ending actually came as a bit of a shock if I'm honest. I wasn't exactly sure what I was expecting but it definitely wasn't that. I'm not going to say what happens of course, but what I will say is how the book came to a close had some truth in it, with an overall message of horrid things that are happening across the world.

You can pick your copy of Q up here.

I hope you enjoyed this review! Are you planning on reading this book?

Thank you for reading <3