Crewel by Gennifer Albin
Adelice has always feared becoming a Spinster, she does not want to use her talent to see the threads of reality to shape the cruel world she lives in. But she slips up, she flubs her years of training to pretend she can't and is dragged to the Spinsters far off, isolated compound anyway. Now the entire nation's eyes are on her, this frustrating girl who won't do as she's told and unwittingly holds the future of the entire world in her hands.
There is a problem with diversity in YA, there just is, and sometimes I like to say that this also applies to the plot lines, ie the entire story. Which is funny since then you have dystopian YA which goes all over the place for story ideas by sheer force of numbers. In this incarnation we have a lead who is aware she lives in a crappy world (although it's unclear if she is unusual for this belief or not, the story doesn't make a big deal out of it), has the super special version of a special talent, strictly enforced gender roles to really show the reader that this world is Terrible (which unpleasantly enough also extends to relationships ugh), an actually all-controlling leadership, and yes a love triangle. So, one or two unique points in there but pretty par for the course actually. My biggest concrete problem with the story was the world building actually, the implication that things used to be better but then there was a crackdown was interesting and nice but the actual mechanics of how the tyranny is enforced to start with (reweaving the literal fabric of time and space) are a bit too fantastical to start with and then it only gets weirder.
I should stop being surprised that many of the books I read these days turn out to be series but once again I was. I won't be reading any farther here since I just don't think this story has anything else for me in it, didn't make me connect with the characters and just didn't do anything original. Not a horrible book but not a memorable one either.
