Review of Conform (Reform #1) by Ariel Sullivan
- The Bossy Bookworm
- Feb 26
- 3 min read
Sullivan's debut dystopian romantasy novel presents a fraught futuristic world where an elite group rules through laws around eugenics. I found myself wanting more worldbuilding and more depth for our main character in this first book in the series.
Ariel Sullivan's futuristic world is centuries past a catastrophic world war that eliminated much of the human race, and things are run by an elite group of powerful people called the Illum. They mandate all marriage and procreation in the land for the Elite as well as for Major and Minor Defects. And in secret, the Illum control far more.
Young adult Emeline lives a largely solitary life as a Minor Defect. She spends her days underground viewing holograms of artwork (the book references actual works of art) and clicking on many of them for permanent destruction, per her instructions from an unseen boss.
Then an Illum does the unthinkable: for the first time in decades, an Illum intends to take a Mate. And it's a Defect: Emeline.
Emeline is thrust into a whirlwind, mingling with powerful people and their traditions and conformity, instantly attracted to her prescribed Mate Collin, a brooding, doting toward Emeline, but professionally cruel and cutthroat man. Yet she is also drawn to Hal, a mischievous young man who is far from part of the Elite and who makes her think about the world differently than she ever has. (He shows up for the first time as the book begins, appearing in Emeline's underground workspace, the only person ever to do so, which seems oddly convenient for the story; he also seems to almost certainly be the purportedly mysterious Reaper.) But the love triangle that is taking shape has repercussions beyond anything Emeline could imagine.
Strict class division, segregation, selective breeding, and eugenics are at the heart of this story and its conflicts. For such weighty, fraught, creepy, troublesome matters, the implications feel largely unexplored. This could be a case of setting up for book two.
I wanted to understand Emeline's inner self more fully. But there seemed little depth to her. She demonstrates a generally flighty manner, ready to swoon over any male in her path, and she doesn't yet know her own mind. She shows unquestioning follow-through at work (Why is any person needed to click buttons to confirm destruction of art that is already designated for destruction? In a futuristic world, surely this could be automated?). She is caught between sympathizing with the resistance (including the Reaper) and her new position, poised to officially join the Elites. The glacial speed of her realization that she must choose sides doesn't feel justified and is somewhat frustrating to witness.
Romance-wise, Emeline experiences an almost-immediate attraction to two men who are nearly precise opposites. Her swooning attraction doesn't seem based in the factors we are privy to. She experiences a constant anguish over her own inability to determine which of the two contradictory men she is most attracted to, and this mental back and forth feels interminable and bordering nonsensical. Note that she is, conveniently, also almost immediately irresistible to both of these men in turn.
I enjoyed what was present in the novel, but the characters, the plot, the details, the worldbuilding, the overarching conflict, the feelings, and the motivations all felt too surface-level to achieve a cohesive story with enough depth to dig into.
For me, Conform didn't dig into its dystopia or its romance fully enough to make me believe in or feel particularly invested in either. I wanted more. Much of the book feels designed to set up for later books, but I felt that this first installment in the series simply didn't deliver as much as I wanted it to.
I listened to Conform as a library audiobook through Libby.com.
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Conform is Ariel Sullivan's first novel. The next installment in this series is scheduled for publication in March under the title Beneath.