The Outrage by William Hussey

Ebook provided by NetGalley for review. Thank you.

Read March 2021

This was a powerful book. Set in a dystopian future England - unknown year but a 2038 car is mentioned as vintage - where anything to do with being LGBT+ or having free will is completely outlawed and many books including 'The Wizard of Oz' (the man behind the curtain) are banned.

Gabe is gay and he begins an illicit relationship with Eric, son of the chief inspector at Degenerate (gay) Investigations, and a very troubled young man. The pair stumble upon an old destroyed library by chance and find a hidden cache of old DVDs - that miraculously still work? A scratch tends to kill them - such as 'Star Wars', 'Love, Simon' and 'Indiana Jones' that inspire Gabe in particular. He then fosters an ambition to become a movie director.

A chance encounter means that their relationship is discovered and the pair are arrested. Eric's father forces him to lie that it was non-consensual in exchange for a role on the force and "freedom". Gabe meanwhile is tortured and worries about his future. Forced to work the degrading and dirty jobs marked as 'degenerate' by a pink cross, or an unknown alternative...

It soon comes to pass that there is an underground resistance that Gabe's parents were part of when they met. Gabe is given help to escape but is soon given information that may help...

I loved the characters and thought that they were well-developed, I especially loved Gabe and his childhood best friend Albert's friendship, and their heart to heart later was beautiful! However the explanation for the initial "Outrage" was a little too brief and I thought the ending was very abrupt. Did anything change? How did their life go?

4/5 Stars

Stef Out x

P.S. Why did Blogger change again? Alignment used to work perfectly.