Fetal Position

by Carolyn Huynh

From the author of the Good Morning America Book Club Pick The Fortunes of Jaded Women comes a heart-pounding speculative novel in which a burnt-out corporate woman joins a startup that promises domestic ease and meaning through enforced motherhood—but as women begin to disappear, she must confront the violent cost of complicity before the state-sanctioned solution claims her body for good.

Set moments in the near future, “high-value” intelligent women are recruited by a mysterious start-up called Hatch to become traditional wives, to help combat the historically low birthrate and the male loneliness epidemic.

The incentives? You’ll no longer have to work your corporate job, you’ll get a subsidized house, land, and a robot butler that’ll do all your errands and domestic labor for you. The catch? You simply trade in your corporate labor for child labor—through being inseminated with organic sperm through a male match.

When Lena Do receives a mystery invite to Hatch, she leaves behind everything she’s ever known to join a cause she’s been taught her whole life to hate. But when women start disappearing and dying around her, she races against the clock to uncover the truth behind the company before her insemination is successful, and she’s trapped forever.

With biting social critique, Fetal Position examines survival, complicity, and the chilling reality of what happens when government policies decide who deserves love—and who deserves to live.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Dystopia, Speculative Fiction, Asian Literature, Adult, Science Fiction Fantasy

256 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication December 8, 2026

About the author

Carolyn Huynh is a novelist, screenwriter, and playwright. She loves writing about unhinged women who never learn from their mistakes, but yearn for joy. A homegrown Californian, she resides in Los Angeles with her partner, daughter, and demon girl dog. When she’s not writing, Carolyn daydreams about having iced coffee on a rooftop in Ho Chi Minh City.

Reviews

[Mai T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

ANHPI Month 2026 #6

Carolyn's first book is an in-depth discourse about women in the Vietnamese diaspora, set up and down the west coast.

Her second features the racism and struggles Vietnamese refugees had to face in a small fishing village near Houston.

This book goes in a completely different direction, taking AI and the tradwife narrative and giving it a very Vietnamese American spin. It's giving Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

Part 1: Red

I am obsessed with the tradwife discourse. I have at least two other books on my shelves dedicated to this topic.

In a near world where men are bottom feeders, Lena is a "high-value intelligent woman" that is exhausted from the corporate grind. Her yellow eyes deem her as other, namely that her mother used artificial sperm to create her.

Pippa is a peppy blonde mom of four sons for Hatch, a semi-secretive startup where women are taught to leave behind their hatred for men and expected to rest their bodies for insemination with "natural" sperm.

Here the men aren't degraded. Here they are allowed some freedoms, such as choosing the gender of their future children. All the children at Hatch, from babies to age four, are boys.

We meet James, Lena's match. Every so often, something causes Lena's memory to glitch. Let's hold onto this for later. When it happens with James, she overlooks it, but I didn't.

Who is he? Why are they given the nicest house at Hatch? What was her mother really doing in her lab? Can we trust the AI bots?

Part 2: White

I powered through this part and the next, because 1) the mystery is eating at me and 2) I was on a plane and decided not to work.

Who are Ori's parents? Why is his name making my ears ring like Lena's? Am I AI enhanced? Just kidding.

I'm very curious as to Pippa and Martha's roles in this whole endeavor. Every time I see a "women supporting women" meme I shake my head, because women do not support women.

I won't lie. I never trusted James. I'm not even sure who first said this to me, and my dad loves repeating it, but "he's just a man."

How are the Domexes involved? Obviously, we can't trust the bots. But how much can't we trust the bots?

And this is where it gets interesting. When Lena stumble upon the boys, namely Ori, he is far more intelligent than his age suggests. And the recruited mothers are getting dumber by the day. Are the children inheriting intelligence? Or stealing it?

I suppose we can go back to Pippa and Martha, and the role of women as a whole. Not that I think Pippa is smart enough to back anything solid, but why is a board of women promoting the creation of intelligent boys? It's giving blue pill women.

Lena's brain goes through it best when it's not glitching. What happened to the other women? Why are the rest of the women getting dumber and losing their learned skills? Did the women that left really leave? Did they die?

Part 3: Blue

I knew they were stealing intelligence from the women. I'm so smart. I'd get conned by Hatch, too. How does one live a life of leisure without having to birth four sons?

In wanting to know who was behind this, I knew we couldn't trust a certain man. He's based on a tech billionaire. Make your guesses as to which one. The man is literally insane.

Fantastic dystopian discourse aside, I think my favorite part of this book is that Lena can just be Vietnamese American without the whole book being about that. We're given Lena's surname in Part 1. Her mom makes her thit kho (not named as such, IYKYK) in Part 3. And that's basically it.

On that note, I'd say this is more about fragile masculinity than race. Men should be lonelier.

[Carm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Fetal Position takes place in a future where women largely run society, robots handle most labor and men have become increasingly irrelevant both economically and reproductively. Birth rates are collapsing, there’s a full-blown “male loneliness epidemic,” and women no longer even need men reproductively thanks to lab-grown sperm. Enter Hatch: a company offering women financial security, beautiful homes and lifelong support in exchange for motherhood. The pitch is simple. Leave the grindset behind and become tradwife propaganda with excellent healthcare.

Hatch never feels cartoonishly evil... but hella creepy. Like if your Instagram feed also had A24 trailer energy. Carolyn Huynh understands exactly how appealing this kind of system would become in a world built on burnout and isolation. Lena isn’t weak for wanting rest or connection. The horror comes from the way autonomy, ambition and identity slowly start getting reframed as obstacles to joy. The book has a very polished, curated kind of creepiness to it. Everything looks comforting on the surface while something deeply wrong buzzes underneath. Strange behavior from the children. Memory glitches. Unsettling AI interactions. The growing sense that women at Hatch are giving up far more than they realize. It all builds into an atmosphere that becomes increasingly unsettling as the story progresses.

If I have any complaint, and believe me, it’s minor, I struggled a little with how quickly I saw certain reveals coming compared to Lena and the other women recruited by Hatch. These are supposed to be some of the smartest, most successful women in society, after all. Why did a DEI hire like me see the red flags first?! 😅 There’s maybe an in-universe explanation for that, but I’m not entirely convinced the timeline fully supports it. Still, I had an absolute blast with this overall.

[KELLY · Rating 4 out of 5]

WHEN THE PERFECT LIFE COMES WITH A PRICE…
🌟🌟🌟🌟
In a near future start up company, Hatch, recruits "High Value" intelligent women to become traditional wives, combating historically low birth rates and the male loneliness epidemic.

Recuited by Hatch, Lena who is lonely and exhausted with corporate life and desperate for human connection, is promised a beautiful home, triple her salary, a robotic butler who does all errands and household chores, and a loving family. All she has to do is accept the terms, marry, and procreate.

Things get seriously weird as inconsistencies at Hatch, questionable medical ethics, a controlling environment, robots replacing humans, and the disturbing discovery that women are disappearing.

Wow I never read anything like this before. The book was glued to my hand because I was so intrigued, uncomfortable, suspicious, and increasingly paranoid the deeper I got. That feeling that something was seriously wrong kept getting stronger as the tension slowly increased. I had no idea where the story was going. And the AI/robot element? Wow! As someone who already has mixed feelings about how much AI is becoming part of our lives and the idea of robots replacing humans, this one really got under my skin. I sure hope this isn't a glimpse of where our world could be headed, because… NOPE. The thought of designer babies creeps me out. Great book though. Seriously thought provoking. Can't wait to talk about this book with others.

Fetal Position explores loneliness, motherhood, bodily autonomy, technology, and what happens when human connection becomes something that can be optimized, controlled, and bought.

Pre-order this now. Release day is 12/ 01 / 2026.

Thank you Netgalley, Carolyn Huynh, and Atria Books, and Simon and Schuster for the ARC.

[Yen · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first Goodreads giveaway! I was excited to get an ARC of this book, I loved her book The Family Recipe. This book is definitely strays far from her usual work and unfortunately I didn't really like it. It took until the end for me to understand what was happening, which is the only redeeming reason why there are 3 stars.

After getting to the end, I liked the concept and I'll certainly keep reading her books but this genre is not her strong suit.

Thanks Goodreads for the giveaway, I'll pass it on to see what others think!

[Abby · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oooooph. This book did not work for me, which is unfortunate because the premise and description had me hooked and excited to read. I found the writing of this author to be particularly immature and juvenile, which will work well for some readers but didn’t work at all for me.

A lot of the twists were blatantly obvious way before being announced, which made this book ultimately pretty boring. This is an idea that I feel could have been better explored by a different writer maybe? This just came across to me as Tradwife fic handled poorly. Not my fave.

Thank you NetGalley, as always, for the advance read!

[Angelie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Need another trad wife book this year? I would say yes, if you like a mix of dystopian, sci-fi, and speculative fiction? There is a splash of AI horror and mystery to this one as well.

This one takes a look at the world in a future where women dominate the work force. There is little need for men. Birthrates are on a severe decline. So much so that the government is paying people 1K a pop just to go on dates, but male prospects aren’t proving worth the effort. Certainly not for Lena Do.

But then Lena receives an invite from HATCH, a commune like setting where women can escape the demands of society, address the oppressive levels of loneliness they feel, and bask in highly attuned bots serving them while they focus on one simple job. To get organically inseminated.

The beginning of the book did work for me, the setting, the build up of knowing something is not quite right. The pacing was a bit challenging for me, with a lot of backstory involving Lena’s mom, her research, and their fraught relationship. But the social critique part had me very intrigued.


So why only a 3 star for me:

The ending did not hold up for me, though I think others might delight in it. I went into this story knowing how trad wife books are trending in an anti-man trajectory. I kind of hoped this one would have had a different or less predictable tune, but there weren’t any surprises on the man devaluing front. And that is where I kind of just meh’d out for this one. Like the book didn’t get some of its own points.


Thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for the opportunity to read and review this eARC in exchange for an honest review.



Thanks to NetGalley and Atria books for inviting me to read and review this eARC in exchange for an honest review! All opinions and statements are my own.

[Rachel B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC.

I am conflicted on this one. The setup is very interesting: the book is set in a future world where more and more women are choosing to remain single and childfree. A company, Hatch, recruits women to get paid to have kids. Oh, and there are robots doing all the housework/childcare. I thought the setup was good, but I did not like the main character, Lena. She was so dumb. Part of this was explained at the end, but I just found myself scoffing at how clueless she was, especially considering who her mother was. Like… you never considered that this wasn’t all above board? I liked the inclusion of the bots, but their depiction was inconsistent - are they super soldiers or what? The ending was rushed and a bit silly. So, it’s an interesting premise/story, but the execution had me scratching my head at times.

[Cheer is Currently Reading · Rating 4.25 out of 5]

FETAL POSITION
RATING: 4.25
GENRE: Speculative fiction

Fetal Position is set in a world where women are the dominant gender alongside bots while men are reduced to secondary citizens as the nuclear family becomes obsolete. Our narrator, Lena Do, is tired of the corporate rat race and plagued by loneliness. She signs up for Hatch, a company attempting to increase the declining birth rates. Hatch promises that in exchange for being inseminated by a natural male’s sperm, you will receive a stipend double your current salary, a home, and a Domex robot that will take care of your daily household chores — offering a life of leisure while being used as a human incubator.

Carolyn Huynh’s book, though seemingly far-fetched, isn’t that far off from the current state of society. Men are experiencing an epidemic of male loneliness, while women are selective of their partners; no longer beholden to financial ties. Fetal Position has a deep look at the way society views women, even when women are the leaders of the world. The underlying commentary in which women are always viewed as being used for their skills rather than for who they are.

Though a relatively short read, I highly enjoyed the nuances of this book and found it hauntingly realistic. I fear that our society is moving in the direction where Fetal Position becomes reality, though I hope we learn the lessons that that Huynh subtly shares.

Thank you to Netgalley and Atria for an advanced reader’s copy of Fetal Position. I look forward picking up a physical copy on pub date 12/1/26.

[Soraya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fetal Position was such an interesting read because it felt like the sci-fi version of Yesteryear. I went into it not really knowing what to expect, and honestly, I probably wouldn’t have picked it up myself if I had seen it in a bookstore. I’m glad I ended up reading it, though, especially because Lena and her mother were such compelling characters. The story takes place in a near future dystopian world where capitalism exists without patriarchy. Women are at the top of society, domestic labor has basically been eliminated through technology and robots, and men have become second-class citizens. It was such an interesting reversal of the world we know, and I liked seeing what that kind of society could look like. I kept thinking, can we women ever catch a break? Whether women are expected to make babies or are being worked to death by capitalism, it feels like there’s always some system demanding something from us. I’d recommend this to anyone who likes medium-paced sci-fi, dystopian stories, trad-wife themes! It was definitely different from what I usually read, but in a good way. I’m really glad I was gifted this book because I probably would have passed it up otherwise. Overall, I’d give Fetal Position 3.7 stars. This book made me think, and I enjoyed the experience of reading it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Publishing for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

[Kat Hills · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brief synopsis: In a near future plagued by plummeting birthrates and a male loneliness epidemic, a mysterious start-up called Hatch recruits “high-value” women with a seductive promise: trade your grueling work life for subsidized security, a beautiful home, and a robotic butler to handle every domestic burden.

I was intrigued and horrified and wildly invested. I flew through this dystopian read. Our main character, Lena, grapples with so many of the choices of the modern woman - work life, children, connection, loneliness. Men are not factored into daily life - women do it all. Lena is DONE with her day in and day out and lured by the promise of rest - all she has to do is sign away her body (and the 18 years following and agree to marry a man. Domestic bots are there to help - exploring the sentience of robots and AI, one of my favorite topics to read about. There are also some deep explorations of loneliness as well as commentary on motherhood and mother-daughter relationships.

Definitely want to read this author’s backlist!

Read if you like: Annie Bot by Sierra Greer , Yesteryear by Caro Clare Burke, or Fallow by Sarah Anderson

Special thanks you to Atria Books for sending me an advanced copy of this book. The publication date is early December 2026.

[Haley]

Fetal Position is a tense psychological thriller/sci-fi novel where Lena (a burned-out corporate woman) joins a program promising an easier life for women in exchange for help combating the low birth-rate. Women in this program basically get paid to vacation for 18 years. It sounds too good to be true, right?

What if men worked in secretarial roles and women were the CEOs and leaders of Fortune 500 companies? What if women didn’t need men to procreate? This novel explores so many different facets of society that the patriarchy has strictly defined for women in the present day and completely flipped the script. The male population is dying out and based off how the men act in the novel… it’s no wonder. Women have learned how to use artificial sperm to conceive and no long need men to do much of anything.

In addition to being self-sufficient, robots also enter the chat. AI has developed to cook and clean, while human behaviors fuel their algorithm to anticipate the needs of the humans they serve. What happens when these bots start to develop feelings? Can they?

This book reminded me so much of 1984. It gives me “banned book” vibes, but in the best way. It makes the reader pause and think. Fetal Position explored a dystopia I have often thought about while working in a male-dominated field. This was one that kept me turning the pages, because the program called Hatch seemed way too good to be true. The ending completely baffled me and this is so outside of what I normally would read!

Overall, this would make a wonderful book club pick, because it would generate tons of wonderful discourse about the future of AI and how it fits into society. Thank you to NetGalley and Atria for the ARC!

[Abby Tait · Rating 3.5 out of 5]

Thank you to Atria for the advanced reader copy for review.

Huynh adds her voice to the broader zeitgeist and discourse surrounding trad wives that’s percolating in the book industry right now with her new release Fetal Position. Taking on a more classic scifi dystopian tone, it has all the ominous, unsettling and uncomfortable feelings I love about dystopian and speculative fiction.

In a society where seventh wave feminism has tipped societal norms and women hold much of the social and economic power, Lena is tired of the intense and lonely corporate grind. She joins Hatch, a company combatting the declining birth rate and male loneliness epidemic by recruiting successful, ‘high-power’ women to have children and ‘become’ trad wives. Incentivizing the women through promises of fulfillment, luxury, rest, financial stability and ‘family’ life - and an escape from living only to work, Hatch attempts to lull women back into their traditional roles, swapping out their dreams of personal labour for child labour.

I think this book tackles an ambitious scope of issues; fragile masculinity, disillusionment, choice and consent, patriarchy under capitalism, pyramid schemes and predatory social marketing, incel culture, and the ethics of data collection (and weaponization). In Fetal Position, the pursuit of freedom, autonomy and ambition become forces that ultimately stifle women’s joy and happiness and upset the order of nature, and Huyhn considers the extremes taken to correct this.

I’m split on whether Huyhn is completely successful on execution and I don’t love the recurring one-dimensional take (in many books) that feminism and women’s liberation equates to women wanting to grind in corporate life. I found the characters to be a little bit one dimensional and sometimes frustratingly obtuse, despite being framed as very intelligent humans. The tech was also a bit convoluted; I still can’t quite picture the robots in this world nor do I really understand how the pattern recognition works. But the author definitely has something interesting to say about how society continues to try to convince women that shrinking themselves and sacrificing what they want will fix society’s problems.

I recommend this for fans of Don’t Worry Darling and Sarah Anderson’s new book, Fallow.

Fetal Position comes out December 1, 2026.

[midori · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

Received this as an ARC around lunchtime, worked a full day, and then gobbled this up in a single sitting. This was riveting from start to finish. Rarely does a novel so wholly absorb in and satiate you from beginning to end.

This is one of those books that could easily find itself on a reading list or syllabus for an English course or introductory women’s studies class. It’s timely and frighteningly on the nose for the direction society could head in on matters like the so-called “male loneliness epidemic”, incel ideology in youth, the rise of tradfem/homesteading, and selective feminism in the face of late stage capitalism. I was engrossed, and I’ll be buying a physical copy come December. Highly recommend.

[Mehek · Rating 4.25 out of 5]

4.25 - I really liked this! it’s hard to nail a mix of creepiness and heart but somehow, those are the exact words I’d use to describe this book. I really got Lena and her choice to join Hatch - especially in a world where while men no longer hold women down, seeing the bonds of womanhood and sisterhood thin under the strain of capitalism was probably just as sinister as the main plot point of the book.

like other reviewers - I did have some guesses as to where I thought it was going and was more or less right on a fair share of them, but I didn’t enjoy it any less for it because of the heart- watching Lena look for her family and her connections in it all was heartwarming.

off to go buy some lemon pesto I guess :)!

[Maddy Martinelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can read my ARC review of Fetal Position on my blog, here: https://thepaperworlds.blogspot.com/2....

This is a spoiler-free review! The version I am reading is an ARC - any changes made for the final publication are not reflected in this review. Fetal Position will be available to purchase on December 8, 2026.

I would first like to thank NetGalley and Atria Books for providing me a copy in exchange for an honest review. The premise of this book, in addition to the alluring cover, really made me stop in my tracks - a declining birthrate, male loneliness epidemic at its height, and seventh wave feminism catapulting women into a world fueled by robot servants and climbing the corporate ladder. But what if the modern, independent, corporate woman grew tired of her success? What if the burn out lured her into a mindset of looking for a way out? Lena Do, a product created by artificial sperm and the daughter of Gemma Do, a pioneer in technological advancements, is supposed to be loving every minute of her child-free, man-free life. Hatch, a start-up garnering traction by promising select women a relaxing, ease-filled life in exchange for producing children for men who want to continue their lineage, catches the eye of Lena when she reaches her breaking point, and she soon finds herself shuttled away to the trad wife lifestyle. The cost? More than she ever anticipated.

Science fiction is such an impactful genre, especially when the concepts at its core hit all too close to home - government policing bodies, making decisions on who can love who - it is jarring in its similarities to the current modern age. Much like in Annie Bot by Sierra Greer, readers are exposed to how even in a futuristic setting that operates under the illusion that women are appreciated, men still are able to use them for their own personal advantages. Huynh creates a world that has women at the top of the career ladder and men at the very last rung, with the appearance that they can only make it in life with the assistance of robot butlers at home as their jobs are replaced by the very things that do their laundry. The sentience of the robots provides an interesting perspective throughout the book - they are not human, yet there is an eerie underlying feeling like they know the characters so much more intensely than another human could. Anticipating needs, telling them how to feel, and being an intricate part of day-to-day tasks makes them an ever-present entity that the characters and the readers cannot escape.

The way Lena slowly falls deeper into Hatch and the promised lifestyle while still remaining hesitant regarding how their practices actually work shows the duality of woman - she is supposedly here to leave behind the hardship of her current life, yet she is determined to discover the secrets those in charge of Hatch are keeping from the women. As more women begin to disappear or meet an untimely end, Lena's suspicions grow deeper, she is thrust into a dangerous game of ensuring her life is not put on the line while she attempts to get to the bottom of what exactly Hatch is using these women for beyond being baby machines.

As Lena's backstory is slowly uncovered and the readers become exposed to the likelihood of her presence causing more harm than good to Hatch's operation, we also see the horrors of incel dogma impacting the children birthed from Hatch. Without having father figures, their ideology still becomes rooted in misogyny and their distaste towards stay-at-home mothers and career women is present without the social construct at play. While they were basically engineered to think this way, it was ever too real as today's modern society is encompassed by being male-centered, even when it comes to women's issues and rights.

Since this is an advanced reader copy, I expected a few typos here and there and likely some choppiness before the final draft - the main thing that stood out to me was an inconsistency about 75% into the book, where it notes that Lena is being asked about a lease renewal for her second insemination. Why is this odd? Because she already had her second insemination - failed, nonetheless - so unless the author was trying to rewrite history, an update is to be made. Obviously I would not let this influence my overall opinion of the book since I know it is not the final version.

An interesting exploration of motherhood, influence, and survival, Fetal Position dives into the thought process of what if being a mother was able to be profitable and be engineered? What are the costs? And more importantly, what are the sacrifices?

You can catch up with me and my current reads by friending me on Goodreads (maddymartinelli), Instagram (@thepaperworlds), Twitter (@thepaperworlds), and following this blog in order to stay up-to-date with any reviews, blog tours, and more!

[Erin Upshaw · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fetal Position is an very ambitious book with lots to say, but unfortunately those ideas are not particularly groundbreaking or compellingly conveyed.

The premise of the book, a woman leaving her high-stakes corporate job to instead get paid to try and reverse population decline by having children, is something that immediately grabs hold of your attention and imagination. It's a dystopian idea that isn't as far-fetched as it might originally have been, although in the modern age, being paid for childbirth is a downright luxury compared to the reality of how over-regulated women's bodies are.

Because of the current state of women's rights in the US, learning more about the world our main character Lena lives in soured me on the book considerably right off the bat. While there's certainly something interesting to examine in the idea of a world where the matriarchy is just as bad as the patriarchy, I don't think Carolyn Huynh fleshed out the world enough for it to feel believable. Rather, it read as almost comedic, where men are ridiculed just for existing and women have taken over all the positions of power only to be unreasonably miserable all the time. Huynh paints an incredibly bleak picture, with the end goal of conveying her message with all the subtlety of a train wreck: maybe capitalism is the true evil. (These words are literally said at one point.)

To that end, Huynh can't seem to decide what she wants to express or focus on in this novel; we have the themes of patriarchy vs. matriarchy, misogyny and misandry, capitalism and the corporate grind, loneliness and isolation, parenting, pregnancy, robots and AI, eugenics, and a complicated mother-daughter relationship. There are parts of this book that I find deeply interesting, like Lena's relationship with her mother and the robot that helped raise her. There's something shining there, just under the surface, about the struggle of a mother to raise a child alongside her grander ambitions, about a child who doesn't understand the fleeting and inconsistent love of her mother. But this gets lost in the bizarre backdrop of the evil matriarchy, and for a book that's meant to be about pregnancy and children, there's very little of either.

Our protagonist, Lena, felt very aimless and suffered from one of the greater sins of character development: we're told how smart she is, how talented she is at recognizing patterns, and then it takes her the entire book to figure out the mystery of who her husband is when I had it pegged more or less from his introduction. It's a fairly obvious reveal, and I don't think the choice of husband is a particularly bad one, but it was absolutely infuriating to watch Lena bumble around, absolutely clueless to all the very obvious things happening around her.

And don't even get me started on the super special child at the end having purple eyes. I had to put the book down to check if this was actually meant to be satire; it's so 2010s Tumblr I couldn't do anything but laugh.

Overall, I think the prose itself is quite thoughtful, but I found the ideas overall reductive and poorly executed. In my opinion, Huynh would have benefitted greatly from picking one or two ideas, making them really cohesive, and really delving into the meat of the issues or plot. I can see a gem glimmering somewhere in there, but there's just too much dirt for it really shine.

[This ARC was provided by Atria Books via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]

[Raymond Muraida · Rating 3 out of 5]

I finished reading Fetal Position by Carolyn Huynh last night and then I turned off my iPad, rolled over, and slept like a baby. I know that’s a pretty lame way to start a review. But, what really should have happened when I finished the book was me lying in the dark, wide eyed, concerned, and unable to sleep as Ms. Huynh’s vision of the near future and a society where high-value intelligent women are recruited to become traditional wives in order to combat a historically low birthrates, and, if the women agree, they will get riches, housing, land, and a robot that will wait on them 24/7 all for the price of being many-times over medically inseminated, go full term if pregnated, and then start over again, should have worried me, enthralled me, and thoroughly convince me that the premise of Fetal Position was indeed a brutal portrayal of our very near future.

Well…as I mentioned, I slept like a baby.

Fetal Position has a great premise and a super main character in Lena Do to journey through this dystopian world. However, I felt the emotional aspect of the novel fell flat, even from the beginning. Lena did not seem like someone who would sign away her life to Hatch. As a person who could see patterns in everything, the Lena portrayed would have seen from the start something was not exactly good with Hatch.

Many times, throughout the novel, I felt Lena was acting like Lois Lane from Superman who had slyly infiltrated Hatch to work on an expose. She was always hearing and seeing things that she should not have ever heard or seen unless she was on an actual fact-finding mission to expose Hatch. And for goodness sakes, when she did hear or see things, I kept thinking RUN LENA RUN, but no. Like a good Lois Lane, she was gonna get the story no matter what happens next. The reason I kept thinking RUN LENA RUN was because Hatch, a huge corporation that was even more powerful than initially described, would have killed off Lena, disappeared her, or shackled her in a dungeon to continue their nefarious business practices. Plus, if she could read patterns so well, she should have been miles away from Hatch; but instead, she used really weak reasons to stay.

The robots were never portrayed consistently as in some scenes they seem to act as super-cops with infrared capabilities and then two scenes later, more like Barney Fife with a broken flashlight.

For the most part, ignoring some of the not-so-great scenes and plotting, I was intrigued by Fetal Position as I was hoping for a satisfying ending. The first half of the book did move well and kept my interest. The last few chapters, well, they kind of had things that made me sit up and say “wait…what?” I mean, seriously, deus ex machina much!

I will say that I enjoyed reading Fetal Position and, more than likely, many readers will. I’m just disheartened that the full potentials of this novel were not met. Fetal Position could have been a contender!

An E-ARC of Fetal Position by Carolyn Huynh was provided by Atria books via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

[Kita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for this ARC!

I really enjoyed this speculative fiction/sci-fi book. I was a bit hesitant to read this, as I had read two similar books this past year (Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke and the ARC Trad Wife by Sarah Langan), but I felt like this was still very different and interesting due to the sci-fi element of it. All of this feels extremely relevant.

Here is a little synopsis - imagine a world where women are excelling in academics and the corporate world. They are all crushing it, they are the executives and climbing the corporate ladder. Meanwhile, the men are the DEI hires. Their social status is lesser than the bots, who complete the everyday menial tasks. Women don't need men, so birth rates are declining, males are complaining of a loneliness epidemic. On paper, this sounds like everything we are currently fighting for. However, the women are so burnt out in their corporate jobs. They are lonely too. Besides just going to the office, coming homing to a lonely apartment, and ordering drone delivery food.

Our main character Lena is one of these high achieving women. On paper, she has it all. A lucrative private equity job. But at the end of the day, she feels lonely. Therefore, when she sees an ad for a stealth startup that aims to solve the declining birth rate and the male loneliness epidemic by recruiting for "traditional wives" who agree to be inseminated using organic sperm, she is more than intrigued. She's allured by getting 3x her corporate salary and not having to lift a single finger, because all the work is done by robots. She bites the bullet and embarks on this journey where she learns that nothing is as it seems.

This book reminded me of the quote - ""I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do laundry and dishes." In this world, I feel like this is what's being done where these bots are doing the manual labor, so the women can focus on their careers. I thought the technological aspects of this book, specially the robots, was extremely interesting and relevant. Even the tidbits of training algorithm was intriguing.

I felt like this book was more a technological/sci-fi book to me, while exploring the trad-wife aspect on the side. However, I do think that it was intriguing that they also had the social-media side of the trad-wife and how this essentially serves as a pyramid scheme. It's fascinating that this type of propaganda was still alluring to corporate women that are earning a lot of money. I liked the way loneliness between women were also explored. Since the nature of their roles were so competitive, they didn't have close friendships or bonds.

Overall, this was an intriguing read!

[rebeccareads · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fetal Position is an ambitious novel contending with the intersection of capitalism, patriarchy, and procreation that doesn't quite hold up under its own weight. It's got a wildly compelling premise, but squanders it through a lack of subtlety, consistency, and thematic depth.

With ideas as interesting as these, I really would've liked elements of surprise and novelty, and barring that, at least a little bit of subtlety about where it's all headed. Fetal Position offers none of that. It's going exactly where you think it is, and it tells you so early on, the instant a particular character - more caricature, really, one who's very recognizable from real life - appears. The family-drama subplot is also similarly signposted, to the point that the flashback chapters really don't add much, because the twist they're working towards was already spoiled early on. In the end, all we really get is that capitalism and the patriarchy are two sides of the same coin, but I struggle to imagine that anyone who picks up this book doesn't already know that. If you're looking for fresh, deep feminist or class analysis, you won't find it here.

The book also suffers from narrative inconsistency. At times it seems like a straightforward reversal of current gender roles as it pertains to the workplace, but there are some ways in which men retain the very excess of privilege that they have IRL today. We're also told FMC Lena is incredibly intelligent, but that's not at all reflected in her thoughts or actions. No, magically knowing that someone is *Morse-code blinking at you* does not count. (What??? The shark had already jumped by that point, but I still cringed hard.) And do not get me started on the ear-buzzing pattern-matching nonsense (as an autistic person, I hated this a lot). Then there's the bots: are they intelligent thinkers, or mindless drones? I don't get the sense that Huynh is purposefully playing with readers' expectations and trying to ask us big questions, but rather that she is herself undecided. The effect is to make the world-building uneven, and quite underwhelming.

I read Fetal Position soon after Fallow by Sarah Anderson, another speculative book that imagines how motherhood might get even worse than it is today. Interestingly, both books go in the direction of women joining startups for the purpose of giving birth. Fallow was not a 5-star read for me, but it's tighter, better written, and more effective than Fetal Position. Importantly, it's just a much more enjoyable read, full of humor and none of the dour, rather listless vibes of Fetal Position. If you're even a little interested in the latter's themes, Fallow is a must-read.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fetal Position by Fetal Position was the kind of dystopian novel that made me uncomfortable in a way that felt intentional and honestly a little too realistic for comfort.

As someone who raised her daughter to be independent, ambitious, and never define her worth through a man, this book hit a nerve for me. The entire concept of women being gently manipulated back into “traditional roles” under the disguise of comfort, luxury, and fulfillment was honestly terrifying. Carolyn Huynh takes the tradwife narrative, corporate burnout, AI, loneliness, and reproductive politics and twists them into something that feels believable enough to make you stop and think.

Lena Do is exhausted from the nonstop corporate grind and gets pulled into Hatch, a company promising women a softer, easier life through motherhood and domesticity. At first glance, Hatch almost sounds appealing—beautiful homes, financial stability, robot assistants, no more hustle culture. But underneath all of it is this unsettling message that women should shrink themselves to solve society’s problems and make men feel important again.

That’s where this book really worked for me.

I appreciated that Lena wasn’t written as weak for wanting rest or connection. She’s lonely, burned out, emotionally complicated, and trying to figure out where she belongs. But the story never loses sight of how dangerous it becomes when women are pushed to sacrifice their intelligence, independence, and identity for the comfort of others.

The atmosphere throughout the book is incredibly creepy without relying on nonstop action. There’s this constant feeling that something is wrong. The memory glitches, the AI bots, the disappearing women, the strange behavior of the children—it all slowly builds into something much darker than I expected.

I did figure out parts of the twist fairly early, and there were moments where the pacing felt repetitive for me, which kept this from being a full 5-star read. But overall, I was still very invested in the bigger commentary and flew through the second half.

What I also loved was that Lena’s Vietnamese American identity existed naturally within the story without becoming the entire story. It added depth without overshadowing the dystopian themes.

This book feels like a warning wrapped inside speculative fiction. It’s about power, control, loneliness, capitalism, fragile masculinity, and the ways society still tries to convince women that becoming smaller is somehow the answer.

And personally? I’ll always root for women choosing their own success, their own identity, and their own future—regardless of what a man or society says they should want.

[Maggie Potter · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are many trad wife books floating around online literary conversation and I, for one, and gobbling them right up.

This take on trad-wifery skews more sci-fi than horror/thriller, comparable (at least in vibes) to Don’t Worry Darling. It follows Lena, a successful corporate cog living in a future world that has developed into a matriarchy, at least if the surface. The men, so-called victims of the loneliness epidemic, are pitiful, sidelined, and seething with misogyny. Economic and environmental collapse is imminent. Lena is burnt out at her career, thinking often of her missing mother, and doing her best to go on dates (paid for by the government, featuring robot waiters).

Lena falls under the spell of a futuristic (slightly more evil than irl) Nara Smith/Ballerina Farms-type, who’s schilling for a start-up called Hatch. Hatch offer’s women a break from capitalism and a chance at the absolutely luxury of being regularly inseminated by men who want children. Anything’s better than the corporate hellscape, I guess. When Lena arrives at Hatch, she’s immediately suspicious, and even more so when the other women begin mysteriously dying.

I found some inconsistencies in the story- distracting. In one example, the Lena is surprised that another character knows something about her. I was confused to read this, and flipped back to their previous conversation, where she herself told that exact character the specific fact. I was equally taken out of the book when common current phrases were inserted as their own paragraph in the narration (i.e. “I said the quiet part out loud.”).

This book tended to do a lot of telling instead of showing. I struggled with the repeated idea that the main character had some kind of enhanced ability to understand patterns. This was both because a clear example of how this works was never given, as well as because the skill was not displayed in practice. Pattern recognition was her most discussed trait, yet her trust for other characters swung wildly back and forth based on their most recent interactions with no thought to repeated patterns of behavior.

I enjoyed the flashbacks in this book, which showed the main character’s strained relationship with her mother. They were tender and sweet, and broke up the page-turning pace nicely.

Overall, this was a fun book and an interesting spin on the current trad-wife lit craze.

Thank you to Atria for providing this ARC for honest review!

[Autumn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first 100 pages of this book were a disservice to the rest of it. It felt like such a long and at times repetitive introduction into the society it takes place in. After the first 100 pages I flew through this book very eager to find out if I was right about a lot of my assumptions which for the most part I was.

Fetal Position is such an interesting look into how women play a role in our own oppression. Even in a matriarchal society women are still working to the bone and pitting ourselves against each other. This book was such a fascinating look into how we view career women as well as mothers specifically within a capitalist society.

That all being said, there were a lot of gaps and a few questions I had throughout this book that never got answered. For example the book says the majority of men are asexual so I assumed that lesbianism would be brought up at some point but it’s actually not mentioned at all in this book (no the ending didn’t count). I know a huge part of this book is about how capitalism overworks people which means they don’t have time to have lives outside of work but considering this book takes place in a matriarchal society and men are looked down upon I assumed women would be seeking relationships with other women but that was simply not the case which I thought was very odd and a misstep. Another thing that threw me off was that using lab grown sperm was so deeply shamed despite that seeming hypocritical considering a woman would have to sleep with a man or be inseminated with a man’s sperm in order to have a baby. Wouldn’t that also be shameful in this society since men are so looked down upon? If having a child is embarrassing isn’t it inherently embarrassing that your parent(s) chose to have a child whether the sperm was lab grown or not?

Despite my grievances and confusion about some aspects of this society this book is very socially relevant in terms of talking about trad wives, the male loneliness epidemic, the rise of AI, and the declining birth rate. Sometimes this book felt a little too real but how the women talked and said the buzz words I just listed made this book fall flat for me. Some of the women side characters just felt a little too vapid even within the context of everything that was going on at Hatch and I think the dialogue in this book could have used a little more fine tuning.

Thank you Netgalley for providing me this eArc in exchange for an honest review.

[Kate Connell · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this novel was enjoyable, within a couple months it will likely fade into the many similar trad-wive tales being published nowadays, especially since many of the twists and turns were seen miles away by the reader. While generally it can be fun to deduce where a story might be going, this novel spoon-feeds its twists to the reader early on but still expects us to be shocked when they're revealed towards the end of the novel. Its tradwives meet Stepford Wives/Handmaids Tale meet science fiction robots running society. Fetal Position wanted to say a lot about a lot of things, but instead said nothing about any of them. The society seemed far-fetched to begin with, which made even the realistic parts feel kitschy.

It's the near future, and women run the world. Well, at least they're doing better than the men? Lena Do has worked hard to get her job but finds herself burnt out from climbing the corporate ladder and eating the same takeout salad for lunch every day. Her only family, her mother, died when she was young, so she fills what little free time she has going on government sponsored dates (the birth rate and male loneliness epidemic seem to be big concerns, although women are also able to have children without the involvement of any men). One night after a particularly horrendous date, she sees an ad for Hatch. Hatch is a start-up recruiting 'high-value' women (hello manosphere talking points), offering three times your salary to be pampered in an ideal town with a beautiful house, a robotic butler, and no domestic responsibility. You allow yourself to be inseminated with a male match's sperm and have the child, then let the robots raise it.

Lena is drawn to the idea of happiness, connection, and a break from the fast-paced life she leads. But when she arrives to join Hatch, she learns appearances can be deceiving. Why are women forgetting their pasts? Why does she have the nicest house here? And what does all of this have to do with her mother?

Thank you to NetGalley for an eARC of this novel.

[Stephanie Peterman · Rating 3 out of 5]

i feel like i've read some version of this story all year... Obstetrix, Mom Brain, Make Me Better, Our Infinite and Inevitable Ends, Yesteryear, i could seriously go on and on...

Fetal Position was yet another dystopian future-style thriller with trad wife vs. feminist undertones that really piqued my interest but ultimately didn't stick the landing. i loved imagining a world run by women and i wish i'd seen more of it before Lena is shipped off to Hatch to be artificially inseminated. sadly, i also saw the whole plot twist coming the second we find out that Pippa's oldest son's name is Ori. i found myself getting hung up on the details of the Domex's relationship with the children, but then somehow Lena's mother's consciousness (essence? aura? personality? idk.) lives on in the bots?

TLDR, Fetal Position becomes more confusing and far-fetched the further along you get, but it has its entertaining moments and isn't a total time suck.

thank you to netgalley and publisher for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

[Melissa Schwartz Walsh · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5, but rounding down. This is a situation in which I really wish half star ratings were possible - because I feel so strongly this is a 3.5 but couldn't quite get myself to round it up to 4. I did really like this dystopian novel, though it was often really intense and didn't always seem to know what direction it was going in. In this world, women are considered elite while men are considered lower class and are often not needed very much. Fertility rates are low in this world, and most women choose to work painstaking jobs rather than start families. AI is much more intense in this world, and there are bots for almost everything. When an opportunity comes for MC Lena to participate with the company Hatch, where she would be paid to give birth and would have bots helping with all housework and childcare, she decides to take it mostly due to loneliness. And along the way, we find out what she learns from both this experience and her past. It was definitely a wild ride and there's a lot more to cover. I thought it was unique, clever, and suspenseful. Conversations regarding genetics were very prevalent and were a reminder of how the Holocaust and many other ethnic cleansings came to be. However, as stated earlier it often lacked direction and there were just so many topics blending together at once. Also, Lena's consistent obliviousness and inability to be more curious sooner than later felt unfair to her character development. The dystopian world could have been better developed, but all I can tell you is I hope there's never a world like the one I read about as it seemed pretty miserable. I do think it's worth a read, but with content warnings in mind: death of a family member, genetics movements, violence, infertility, AI, sexism, data mining, tampering with people without consent, extreme loneliness.

[Lauren McCain · Rating 1 out of 5]

1 🌟
Received an ARC from NetGalley for my honest review

Oh goodness. This was a novel that I was genuinely excited for! The premise sounded like an ambitious addition to the speculative fiction, feminist horror genre; a genre that has recently blossomed with pop culture’s spotlight on tradwives, Mormon wives, etc., and the stubborn resurgence of performative purity culture in conservative circles. Sadly, a promising synopsis does not a good book, make.

I went into this book hoping for either: an interesting take on patriarchy vs matriarchy, a tech-company satire, maybe an (albeit, overdone) dystopian escalation of a state regulating women’s bodies, or at the very least, some kind of horror that builds on the existing societal & bodily horrors of femininity, motherhood, etc. Instead, what I got was Deja vu from trying to read ‘Matched’ by Allie Condie when I was 11 and DNFing (its corpse remains eternally on my kindle as a reminder).

Ultimately I think Fetal Position was trying to say too many things, and as a result, it ended up being a bit of a narrative mess that didn’t say much. Disappointingly, I found Huynh’s writing to be quite juvenile. Details were revealed in such an obvious manner that I convinced myself they must be red herrings, or part of something deeper going on; they were not. Characters revealed their intentions too soon & anticlimactically, leaving no room for revealed motivations — or much of anything — down the line. There was no nuance and no subtlety for as far as the eye could see.

In terms of the plot itself, I think Huynh spread the contents a bit thin in an ambitious attempt to weave together a smorgasbord of hot issues from our current socio-political state — that to be fair, a cohesive plot (that uses the terms not only in name, but in practice) could string together — topics like eugenics, big-tech, capitalism, bureaucracy, misogyny, misandry, matriarchy, patriarchy, surveillance state, etc.. But misunderstanding concepts makes it difficult to critique/satirize them in a way that convincingly draws parallels and analogies to our own world.

Even if aspects of ‘A Handmaid’s Tale’ seem a bit simple/redundant by today’s standards, Atwood successfully developed an authoritarian, Christo-facist theocracy that critiqued recognizable aspects of fascist regimes. Laws in Gilead are rooted in control & defended by religious scripture. There are several different forms/levels of resistance shown, ranging from small acts of rebellion performed by individuals, to underground networks & military building; contrasted with characters that truly believe in the project of Gilead, whether in search of power, self-preservation, or promised stability. These aspects of humanity that Atwood included are essential in order to make a satire of a society that holds up under its own weight, and was much of what I found missing in Fetal Position.

In Fetal Position, Huynh drops us into a matriarchy that has supposedly taken over from patriarchy in a way that is not fully explained or fleshed out. Hey, if I know one thing about men in the highest positions of power, it’s that they’ll most assuredly give it up quietly and without a fight. A short explanation about a Seventh Wave of feminism where women, “fed up” with men, swore off dating, marriage, and children in place of becoming “titans of industry”. So we Girlbossed our way out of centuries of oppression, got it.

Women now hold all positions of power and men are denoted to secretarial roles and are degraded simply for existing. And yet, despite holding all positions of power, women are still lonely, overworked and unhappy…? The world is still burning, economy declining, the rich are still rich, and men are still incels for inexplicable reasons. Oh and there are robots.

This literary trend has become quite a pet peeve of mine in dystopian fiction: Matriarchies that supposedly have no answers or ideas for reimagining or reorganizing society, women in charge just seek to dominate in a mirror image of patriarchy — by deep throating capitalism and quickly attempting to subjugate those who had subjugated them. This is not only unimaginative and a blatant misrepresentation of Matriarchy, but it just feels lazy. Why bother with a gender swapped society if you don’t plan to flesh out the aspects that gender touches in a society in any meaningful way? Did the CIA pay you?

Huynh creates no characters who do not fit cleanly into gender norms in this universe. There are no experiences of gender dysphoria, and not much exploration of gender as a social construct or as existing separate from sex at all. Rather than using gender reductionism as a tool of irony to parody, it just seemed to become canon in this eugenics-focused, Elon-inspired ‘Hatch’ company.

Its difficult to critique in depth without spoilers, especially as this novel hasn’t been released yet, but between the constant narrative inconsistencies, the frustratingly unimaginative world-building, and perhaps the most annoying main character I have ever been forced to follow, I cannot in my right mind recommend this book, despite how excited I was for its release.

A novel that is sold as a parody of a gendered society but doesn’t tackle any of the actual gendered aspects of society (especially violent ones) that oppress us, screams liberal “feminist” literature. I want radical reimaginings of society, or satirical fiction with teeth, and I don’t think this novel succeeded in either.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

ARC REVIEW 🤖 FETAL POSITION by Carolyn Huynh | This book is a futuristic take on the current wave of tradwife-focused stories, a speculative mystery that feels uncomfortably plausible. Decades from now, men are diminished and nearly valueless, offering nothing to women, who are now in charge. It’s not a matriarchy, though; it’s a lonely, capitalistic, yet oddly familiar and pedestrian hellscape. Women and robots are the primary workers and the daily decision-makers, but the real power still lies up top with billionaire elites. Lena, our burnt-out protagonist, is lured in by a new startup focused on correcting the low birth rate crisis: Hatch, where the promise is to come to the compound, become inseminated by your assigned man, and then relax into a life of leisure as your (and your baby’s) every need is catered to by domestic bots. It’s a nearly irresistible deal to Lena and other modern women who see no future beyond toil and solitude. But once Lena arrives at Hatch, things start to seem suspicious and a bit insidious. Where are the men, really? Why are women disappearing? And why is Lena haunted by the memory of her late mother, a pioneer in the science of domestic bot engineering? As the questions (and deaths) pile up, Lena is forced to get to the bottom of both the mystery of what’s happening at Hatch as well as her own matrilineal connection to everything that’s happening. I tore through FETAL POSITION in just a couple of days, compelled by the myriad mysteries within, and horrified by the uncanny landscape it describes that feels too much like a future we could face. It’s sci fi in the way that old sci fi used to eerily predict future society and technology. FETAL POSITION is out 12/1- check it out if you’re interested in a totally different take on the tradwife book! Big thanks to Atria Books and Carolyn Huynh for the e-ARC!

[Shari · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite fiction genre is dystopian. A plausible scenario where it is a cautionary tale for real life, where we are only one or two clicks off from this becoming a potential reality. That’s where Fetal Position lives. This book is like a Black Mirror episode and kept me turning pages until late into the night. Lena is burned out from the capitalist corporate grind, in a world where women dominate and men have been somewhat emasculated to the sidelines as no longer necessary. After work one night, she sees an ad on the subway for “Hatch” where a beautiful trad wife influencer has four children and a seemingly perfect life on a farm, and where you, too, could come and bear children and get out of the rat race.

Lena has a talent for pattern recognition — she gets a bit of a buzzing in her head as she’s tracking down a pattern. It’s made her wildly successful in the financial sector, but when she receives a mysterious invitation to join Hatch, she leaps at the chance to get out of the endless corporate world so she can live a beautiful life and raise children and make three times her salary while doing it. Things are of course, never as they seem. Women are dying for mysterious reasons and she attempts to user her pattern recognition skills to get to the root of what is happening inside the Hatch enclave.

This book has a feminist and anti-capitalist theme which I absolutely loved, and it felt very timely, especially in our current world climate. I kept imagining what it would be like to watch this as a movie, and I hope it gets optioned one day — it’s that good. I cranked through it in a weekend and wanted more. I’d love to read another book in this world.

Thank you to Carolyn Huynh and Atria books for this advanced reader copy.

[Trinh Tran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can you imagine a world where woman are the superior gender and men are treated as second-rate citizens, even below robots? That's the world we're dropped into in Fetal Position.

But even in this world, corporate burnout is real and women are lured into an alternative and idealistic life - one with no responsibilities and no worries about money. All they have to do is lease their body to help the declining birth rate. It's seemingly perfect. Perfect like the Stepford Wives, with beautifully manicured lawns, delicious meals and spa days without having to lift a finger. Perfect as long as they ignore the strange children, the gaps in their memory, and their neighbors disappearing.

In our current world of increasing isolation and burnout, it's easy to understand why there's a growing popularity of trad wife propaganda (even if its terrifying). And Carolyn Huynh shows her understanding of that delicate balance with this scifi dystopian novel. Although parts of the story were predictable, it didn't take away from the book, and rather added to my excitement to continue reading to see how it would be revealed to the characters. Carolyn aimed to tackle a laundry list of issues - predatory social media marketing, pyramid schemes, incel culture, male loneliness, mass data collection, patriarchy under capitalism, and choice/consent. And I think the book successfully touches on all of them. I almost wish this world was a duology or series to go even deeper into the topics. Or maybe I'm just obsessed with Carolyn's writing and want to read more from her. Either way, I loved this book and want everyone to read it so we can have in-depths discussions about it.

Thank you Atria and NetGalley for the ARC!

[Laramie Graber · Rating 2.25 out of 5]

Fetal Position is full of interesting, relevant ideas. Unfortunately, the execution is a bit of a mess.

The premise is good: Thanks to a mix of capitalism, feminism, misogyny, and artificial intelligence, the future is virtually without families. Banking on trad-wife values to sell the idea, Hatch is recruiting men and women to reverse the fertility crisis. Their real goal is far more nefarious.

The novel’s quick writing style ensures the story is entertaining. At the same time, the novel never develops coherent theory behind its ideas. It’s not exactly clear how the story’s mix of ideologies have caused the current crisis, they simply have. What change to the economy allows a billionaire to benefit from a complete stock market crash? Why do robots seemingly have emotions one moment and none the next? I also found it odd, given the complete breakdown of relationships between men and women, that gay people are never mentioned once.

Perhaps, given that the novel is told in first person narration, some of this confusion is deliberate. The problem is that the protagonist, Lena Do, is supposed to be smart and capable (she is specifically recruited by Hatch for these reasons). Even if she’s wrong sometimes, it doesn’t make sense that her worldview would be so confusing given her abilities and education.

And this disconnect—Lena’s stated intelligence versus the way she actually behaves—is the main reason why the novel didn’t work for me. She consistently gaslights herself into believing absurd things and is incredibly passive throughout the novel.

Still, despite being frustrating and too scattered to recommend, because Fetal Position is consistently bold and thought-provoking, I don’t regret reading it.