Kirkus Review

 

THE CHAPERONE 

By: M Hendrix

Release Date: June 6, 2023

A tense YA about a dystopian America and a teenage girl who desires change. 

Life changes completely as she knows it when her Chaperone dies unexpectedly, and she suspects there is more to the death than her family is letting on. 

Stella is a young girl in “New America” where young girls have no autonomy and are not allowed to be seen without their Chaperones. One night, Stella’s Chaperone, Sister Helen, dies unexpectedly, and she is assigned a new one. Sister Laura alters Stella’s world view from day one, and the discoveries only continue to change the course of Stella’s life as the novel goes on. Stella has always been one to follow the rules placed on young girls in New America, but Sister Laura shows her the challenges and issues with blind obedience. Stella begins to learn the real power that her father holds in New America, and the gruesome truth about Sister Helen likely being murdered because of her place in the resistance. Stella slowly learns her place as an agent of change in New America as she plots her escape to avoid marrying the guard her father has betrothed her to. The male dominant society leaves a bad taste in your mouth as you discover just how little women really have a voice and a say in what happens to them. The Chaperone feels a little bit like a YA Handmaid’s Tale in all the best ways possible. The young female character spends the entirety of the novel discovering herself and her purpose as a woman in this new society that she has been thrust into, especially when her parents' generation remember exactly what it was like before “New America” took over. Stella learns that many of the Chaperones are members of a society aimed at helping these young girls escape their horrid fates assigned to them. Stella is able to escape New America with the help of the other Chaperones and Sister Laura, but it is not long before she decides to return to “New America” as a Chaperone herself in order to be an agent of change for other young girls going through the same doubts and possessing the same fears that she had of her own. 

This is a powerful story of self-discovery, advocacy, and change as well. Female empowerment at its finest.