Blue Ticket by Sophie Mackintosh. Advance Reader Copy (eARC) from the publisher via Netgalley included. No affiliate links used. Read my full disclosure policy here.
When girls have their first period they are divided into one of two categories. They either receive a white ticket or a blue ticket. One ticket sets you on the path to motherhood and marriage. The other means you will not become a mother. The decision is made for you and there is no changing the colour of your ticket.
Calla knew this would be the case. That she would not have a choice. Yet, here she is wondering what her life would be like if she had been given a different ticket. What if the tickets weren’t a thing and she could choose for herself whether or not to start a family?
In rejecting the life planned out for her, Calla must face the consequences. Consequences that include trying to outrun the powers that be. At least they have given her a head start!
Sophie Mackintosh does not spoon feed her reader. How exactly the dystopian world of Blue Ticket came to be is left up the reader’s imagination. Not having all the facts is something I enjoy in dystopian fiction, but I know some people would prefer more world building. The story is told from Calla’s point of view, so it makes sense to me that she may not have all the facts either.
Blue Ticket is about motherhood and identity. It is about desire, grief and anger. It is about the devastating effects of patriarchal violence. It is a haunting exploration of what it means to have free will, while inhabiting a female body.
Blue Ticket by Sophie Mackintosh is published by Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin Random House, and is available in hardback, paperback, ebook, and audiobook format.