The Boy I Am Written by K. L. Kettle. Reviewed by Becca, Age 17

The Boy I Am is a novel about a boy named Jude Grant, who lost his best friend, Viktor Perrault, at the hands of the Chancellor. He now plans to get revenge for what she did, and in order to murder her he must be sold to her during the auction.

The story reminds me of ‘The Handmaids Tale’ but with reversed gender roles. The treatment of the boys is inhumane. I think the writer intends to shock us into believing that it cannot be real.  Yet the boys’ experiences are ones that women have had to go through for centuries; the gender stereotypes, no rights to education and trying to thrive / survive in a male-dominated world.

In this story the boys are born into a matriarchy of elitist women who control them from the moment they are born. By reversing the genders, K.L Kettle makes this feel even more disturbing and uncomfortable to the reader.  I found this technique incredibly interesting, because it demonstrated how normalised some of the behaviour is when it’s directed towards women rather than men.

I was enthralled from the moment I picked the book up and finished it in about 3 days because I couldn’t put it down. I thought this book was so incredibly powerful to read, it is brilliantly written and I believe it is something everybody should read at least once in their lifetime, mostly because of how eye-opening it is, but also because of how beautifully well it is crafted.