Matthew McElroy ’s Reviews > The Power > Status Update

However this ends, I will have a lot to think about for days, if not weeks. The premise is so simple, and yet, I have never read anything like it.
I LOVE the organization of the book, and the brief historic interludes, which serve to build the anticipation as you get closer to the end of the story.

I had feared this would be the turn the story took. But I really hoped it wouldn't. It's still just as compelling. Given the structure of the story, we still have six years and then at least a thousand years worth of history to unpack. Thank you Ms. Alderman for not having the turn come in the last 15 pages. As readers, we get to embrace the story with you.

Make this your first book of 2026.

I have never read anything like it.

At the risk of using a terrible cliché/ pun- every page crackles with energy. How often do you get a book where you just put aside everything else you are supposed to do and just read it?

Possibly the best book I have read this year, and 2026 will have to have a big one to top this.

Oh, I am completely hooked.

A certain percentage of the women in the world now have the ability to project electricity from their bodies. It seems like it is mostly adolescents so far, and that comes with everything that children... 12-16 would do. Play with it, fight boys, fight other girls and more.

Already a fascinating premise.