Book Review | The Community by Heidi Visser

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Thank you @lovebooktours for the chance to read and review the ARC for The Community by Heidi Visser

The Community comes out on the 1st of March, 2022, and is published by Cayelle Publishing. It also looks like Heidi Visser’s first foray into fiction, with her other book being a cookbook! That’s a big pivot Heidi!

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It’s been a while since I’ve read about a dystopian world, and I genuinely can’t remember the last time it wasn’t a YA dystopia; a gap in the market that Heidi Visser tries to fill with her book, The Community.

Our main character Nora seems to be doing everything right, until she gets pregnant; a miracle because they’re giving everyone in the population birth control. When she’s told to abort it, she runs, with the support of her best friend and her fiancé. When she’s caught and sent to the outskirts, she finds out that The Community has been buying children because they no longer have the ability to make test tube babies.

I didn’t really understand why The Community claimed that the lower levels got pregnant more than the higher levels; if it was more common and openly talked about then wouldn’t it have been easier to deal with Nora? Who gets a child and based on what?

Still, an interesting read, and I would check out another book by this author!

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How much control is too much? 

It’s the question Nora must ask herself after illegally becoming pregnant. It’s not as if she planned it. In fact, the very opposite – she received drugs to prevent it, just like every other baby in the Community. Extra children equal extra food rations, an impossibility for a society that controls every last resource.

She is on the cusp of having it all: perfect job, perfect fiancé, perfect wedding vaulting her from a Level Four to the uber-wealthy Level Six. Now this baby, and her rebellion against Community rules, is ruining everything. But it’s not just her life unraveling; it’s deeply hidden secrets that Nora’s escape threatens to reveal. She, along with the rest of the Community, must confront their past if there’s any hope of survival.