Book Club: Yours for the Taking by Gabrielle Korn
2025-04-16 02:00 - 03:00 UTC | Virtual Library
Discuss Yours for the Taking (https://sfpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S93C5981369) by Gabrielle Korn, our March/April On the Same Page (https://sfpl.org/books-and-media/read) selection. This gripping and incisive dystopian novel is set in 2050, when climate change has rendered the outside world virtually uninhabitable. Survival is guaranteed only to those accepted into The Inside Project—massive weather-safe structures funded by corporate sponsors and built atop the ruins of cities.

Jacqueline Millender, a billionaire feminist icon with a hidden agenda, envisions her Inside as a utopia for women only, but her definition of “womanhood” excludes trans women, nonbinary people and anyone outside her cisnormative ideals. The novel follows three interconnected characters caught in Jacqueline’s web: Ava, who enters the Inside alone after her girlfriend is denied admission; Shelby, a working-class business major swept into Jacqueline’s glamorous world as her personal assistant; and Olympia, a med school graduate recruited to oversee the health department. As cracks in Jacqueline’s system begin to show, the trio must grapple with betrayal, survival and their own complicity in a society built on exploitation.

Yours for the Taking explores themes of queer love, chosen family and resilience while exposing the beauty and horror of power, privilege and the limits of corporate feminism.

We’ll dive into the book’s themes, characters and relationships, exploring how power dynamics and climate change influenced their choices. We look forward to an engaging discussion of Jacqueline, Shelby, Ava, Olympia, Orchid, and the effects of climate change on their lives.
