Review of Unborn by Rachel McLean

Unborn
She killed her unborn child. The punishment will fit the crime.
America, 2026.
Feminism has been defeated.
Equality is a memory.
And abortion has been criminalized.
Three women find themselves on the wrong side of the law.
Kate, carrying the child of a sexual predator.
Grace, whose baby will be born with a fatal deformity.
And Cindee: abused, abandoned and pregnant.
Can these three very different women come together to fight an oppressive system and win their freedom?
Find out by reading Unborn, a chilling dystopia combined with a gripping legal thriller.


REVIEW
I love dystopia and I love anything with birth and the reproductive rights of women as themes. Reading The Handmaid’s Tale as a girl will do that to you!

Unborn is set in the very near future in the easily recognisable USA of practically now – a country of right-wing, misogynist, reactionary patriarchy where even a late miscarriage will not engender any degree of support and compassion from the authorities but rather suspicion, and a set of race-based stereotypical assumptions. However, this opprobrium is not confined to poor black women; middle-class white women (hitherto always able to choose) also find themselves the wrong side of the law… Add to this heady fin-de-siècle mix a female doctor trying to protect the women in her charge in a correctional facility, and a frightened young white girl trying to survive while she awaits the birth of her unwanted child and you have a page-turner.

There is always balance in the book: not all the men are power-crazy sleazeballs, the white female lawyer is not (thankfully) the white saviour of the poor black woman, and the frightened girl is not quite the victim that she might have become in less skillful writing. There’s a legal procedural thread in the book that is an absolute doozy!

This is the first book of a series and a powerful reminder of how far women have come in terms of reproductive rights. How easily it could all be taken away. This is a story of our times. I’m looking forward to the next book in the series.

Buy it here in the UK.
and here in the US.

Author Bio:

'My name's Rachel McLean and I write thrillers that make you think.

What does that mean?

In short, I want my stories to make your pulse race and your brain tick.

Do you often get through a thriller at breakneck pace but are left with little sense of what the book was really about? Do you sometimes read literary fiction but just wish something would damn well happen?

My books aim to fill that gap.

If you'd like to know more about my books and receive extra bonus content, please join my book club at rachelmclean.com/bookclub. I'll send you a weekly email with news about my writing research and progress, stories and bonus content for each book. And I'll let you know when my books are on offer.'

Follow Rachel McLean on Twitter.