Yours for the Taking Summary, Characters and Themes

Yours for the Taking by Gabrielle Korn is a near-future feminist dystopia set in a climate-devastated America. At the center is “Inside,” an exclusive, self-contained city designed to protect select women from the collapsing outside world.

The novel follows three central characters—Ava, Olympia, and Shelby—whose paths converge within and around this utopian façade. Through intersecting personal stories and ethical dilemmas, Korn explores the consequences of selective salvation, the costs of survival, and the limitations of identity politics.

The book asks: what happens when a dream of safety and empowerment turns into an instrument of control?

Summary 

In a not-so-distant future, environmental collapse has rendered much of the planet uninhabitable. New York, now rebranded as “Brook,” is in ruins.

A select group of people are offered refuge in a massive experiment called “Inside”—an elite, enclosed society designed by billionaire feminist Jacqueline Millender. It promises safety, community, and a new chance at life, but only for those deemed fit.

Ava, a plant biology teaching assistant, is one of the chosen few. Her partner Orchid, a carpenter helping build the facility, is not.

Orchid insists Ava go anyway, forcing Ava to carry the burden of leaving her love behind. Meanwhile, Shelby Silver, an ambitious trans woman and business student, secures a coveted position working under Jacqueline herself.

Her dreams of success blind her to the deeper implications of her new role. Then there’s Olympia, a queer Black medical student and writer, who begins to rise in Jacqueline’s orbit after her work on race and health garners attention.

As Inside launches, Ava enters a hyper-controlled environment. Personal belongings are stripped away, appearance is standardized, and strict behavioral guidelines are enforced.

Ava quickly realizes that freedom has been traded for safety. At the same time, Olympia is offered a leadership role as Inside’s medical director.

She accepts, hoping to make change from within, but quickly grows concerned with the ethical compromises required—including forced medical procedures and racial erasure in admissions policies.

Jacqueline’s grand plan includes creating a female-only society, one she believes will be inherently superior. She begins a covert project to conceive a daughter via IVF, whom she considers the ultimate proof of her vision.

The baby is born and raised in anonymity, monitored closely as a test subject rather than a child. Olympia grows uneasy with the manipulative parenting approach and documents what she witnesses in encrypted logs.

Inside’s residents begin to notice signs of deeper authoritarianism—mandatory counseling sessions, emotional surveillance, and “resilience training” that erodes individual identity. Ava joins a quiet resistance group, while Olympia starts leaking internal information.

Meanwhile, Shelby—stationed on an orbiting space station—uncovers data files and Olympia’s logs, realizing the extent of Jacqueline’s deception. As unrest grows, Ava and Olympia team up.

They share their findings and coordinate small-scale rebellion. Jacqueline tightens her grip, promoting her daughter as a symbol of hope to maintain loyalty among the increasingly skeptical residents.

A critical internal memo leaks, revealing sterilization plans, further fueling dissent. Eventually, Shelby leaks Olympia’s files to global media, exposing Inside’s corruption.

Public reaction is swift. Jacqueline tries to spin the story, but her credibility collapses.

Residents demand transparency. Ava and Olympia broadcast their version of events, and Jacqueline is quietly removed from power.

Outside governments intervene and offer residents the option to leave. Ava chooses to exit, walking into a ruined but honest world.

She carries the memory of Orchid and the resolve to fight for a better future on her own terms. Olympia stays behind to reform Inside into a transparent, consent-based haven.

Shelby speaks out, becoming a global voice for truth and justice. In the end, Inside is no longer a fortress for the privileged, but a symbol of reckoning and rebirth.

Ava, Olympia, and Shelby evolve from pawns in someone else’s plan to agents of their own futures. They are united by a shared understanding that real change must be built, not engineered.

Characters 

Ava

Ava begins the story as a plant biology TA grounded in scientific curiosity and personal love, most notably with her partner Orchid. Her journey is marked by emotional and ideological conflict as she is selected to enter Inside while Orchid is left behind.

This early trauma creates a rift in Ava’s psyche, deepening her guilt and sense of complicity. Once inside, she becomes increasingly alienated by the sterile, regulated environment and begins to question the utopia’s cost.

Her gradual evolution from passive participant to active resistor is central to the novel’s arc. Ava eventually becomes a catalyst for rebellion, driven by both memory and moral clarity.

By the novel’s end, she chooses the painful uncertainty of the outside world over the illusion of safety. This underscores her growth into a principled, independent figure who embraces freedom over comfort.

Olympia

Olympia’s character stands as the novel’s most ethically complex figure. A queer Black med student and writer, she is drawn into Jacqueline Millender’s circle due to her intelligence and public voice on race, health, and feminism.

Initially optimistic about helping shape Inside into a more inclusive space, Olympia quickly becomes disillusioned as she uncovers Jacqueline’s authoritarian tactics and binary ideologies. Her moral compass is tested as she works within a corrupt system, at times complicit, yet always seeking avenues for resistance and reform.

Olympia meticulously documents the injustices she witnesses and ultimately plays a vital role in exposing the dystopia’s hidden machinery. Her final decision to lead the ethical restructuring of Inside reflects a redemptive transformation.

She evolves from a cautious idealist to the revolutionary architect of a new kind of justice. Her arc speaks to the power of integrity and the challenge of confronting oppressive systems from within.

Shelby

Shelby Silver is portrayed as a highly ambitious, young trans woman who idolizes Jacqueline Millender and believes in the promise of empowerment through capitalism. Her early arc is characterized by loyalty, hard work, and a desire to prove herself, even as she drifts away from her leftist roots and her family.

Stationed aboard a space station managing digital PR, Shelby slowly uncovers the darker layers of the Inside project. Her transformation is marked by internal struggle as she confronts her past complicity and her growing awareness of Jacqueline’s deceit.

Ultimately, Shelby becomes a key whistleblower, using her platform to expose the truth and reclaim her voice. Her broadcasted resignation is one of the novel’s pivotal moments, signaling both her moral awakening and her courage.

Shelby ends the story as an advocate for transparency and justice. She redefines what it means to wield power responsibly.

Jacqueline Millender

Jacqueline is the enigmatic and polarizing architect of Inside. She embodies the tensions between feminist idealism and authoritarian control.

A billionaire entrepreneur and self-styled savior, she constructs a female-only utopia in response to a crumbling world but does so with an iron grip and narrow vision. Her vision excludes trans men, limits diversity, and employs coercive measures disguised as care.

Her use of surveillance, reproductive manipulation, and psychological control reveals a disturbing conflation of maternalism and militarism. Jacqueline sees her daughter, born through IVF, not as a person but as a symbol of the utopia’s future.

Even when confronted with rebellion and moral criticism, she clings to her delusions. She is ultimately removed from power, her dream reduced to a cautionary tale about the perils of unchecked utopianism cloaked in progressive language.

Orchid

Though Orchid has limited direct presence in the narrative, her absence becomes a haunting and formative force in Ava’s development. As Ava’s partner left behind when Ava is admitted to Inside, Orchid represents love, sacrifice, and the human cost of elite salvation.

Her insistence that Ava should go—even without her—adds layers of emotional tension and unresolved grief that permeate Ava’s time inside. Orchid symbolizes the world left outside, the people deemed unworthy of protection, and the relationships sacrificed in the name of progress.

Her memory drives Ava’s emotional reckoning and eventual rebellion. She grounds the story in a deeply personal sense of loss that transcends ideology.

Themes

Power and Control in Feminist Utopias

A central theme in Yours for the Taking is the relationship between power, control, and feminist ideology within utopian frameworks. Jacqueline Millender’s creation of Inside is initially presented as a radical vision for a world free from male violence, built on feminist principles of safety, equality, and autonomy.

However, the execution of this vision becomes a study in authoritarianism masquerading as empowerment. The selective admission process, enforced psychological conditioning, sterilization policies, and surveillance tactics gradually strip residents of agency under the guise of liberation.

This dissonance underscores the dangers of concentrating power in the hands of a single ideological architect, even one claiming progressive aims. Through Olympia’s growing discomfort and Ava’s psychological unraveling, the novel critiques the ease with which well-meaning utopias can become mechanisms for coercion and domination.

Feminism, when enacted without inclusivity, consent, and critical reflection, becomes a tool of oppression rather than liberation. The book uses Jacqueline’s eventual downfall not only to show the failure of her authoritarian feminist state but also to signal the necessity for decentralized, democratic models of change.

Identity, Exclusion, and the Limits of Inclusion

The novel places significant focus on identity politics and the tension between inclusion and exclusion in institutional structures. Jacqueline’s initial utopian idea—safe space for “women”—reveals its limitations as soon as definitions of “womanhood” are applied with rigidity.

Trans identities are either ignored or tokenized, and non-binary experiences are erased entirely. Olympia, one of the few queer Black women in a position of leadership, becomes the voice of ethical resistance, continually challenging the binary logic and white-centered policies that dominate Inside.

Her push for race-conscious admissions and gender-inclusive language illustrates the inherent flaws in colorblind and essentialist frameworks. These blind spots are not minor oversights but structural failings that undermine the very principles of justice and equality.

Meanwhile, Ava’s journey from complicit beneficiary to active resistor is shaped by her realization that even those selected for Inside are bound by rigid definitions and forced to conform. The theme of identity here is not just about self-recognition but about the freedom to define oneself outside of systems that seek to categorize and control.

The failure of Inside is, in many ways, the failure of a narrow feminist project that seeks to liberate by filtering rather than embracing difference.

Surveillance, Consent, and Bodily Autonomy

A persistent undercurrent throughout the novel is the violation of bodily autonomy under systemic surveillance. Inside’s culture of control extends from psychological profiling to medical experimentation, reproductive manipulation, and biometric ranking.

Residents are subjected to mandatory therapy sessions, coerced gratitude, and unseen monitoring that constantly shapes their behavior. The invasive nature of these policies reveals a chilling contradiction: a society supposedly built for freedom ends up dictating every aspect of life, from reproductive rights to mental well-being.

Ava’s growing realization that her autonomy has been traded for safety parallels Olympia’s ethical crisis as she’s made complicit in administering the very systems she opposes. The creation and surveillance of Jacqueline’s daughter becomes a powerful symbol of how reproductive choices are weaponized to serve ideological ends.

The theme of consent—whether in entering Inside, undergoing medical procedures, or participating in the community—is frequently obscured by rhetoric about safety and sacrifice. This raises the question: can safety ever justify the suspension of agency?

The novel’s answer is an emphatic no, underscoring that freedom without bodily autonomy is a hollow construct.

Grief, Love, and Emotional Isolation

While political and ideological themes dominate, Yours for the Taking is also deeply concerned with the emotional cost of systemic structures. Ava’s personal grief over leaving Orchid, combined with her emotional suffocation inside Inside, reflects the broader isolation that pervades the society.

Human connection becomes transactional or suppressed, as residents are discouraged from forming bonds that challenge conformity. Ava’s eventual participation in an underground community of resistors serves not only as political defiance but also as an emotional lifeline.

The emotional journeys of the characters—Ava’s mourning, Olympia’s disillusionment, Shelby’s guilt—highlight how authoritarian systems thrive by suppressing intimacy, individual vulnerability, and love. Even Jacqueline’s relationship to her surrogate-born daughter is emotionally disconnected, treating the child as a symbol rather than a person.

The novel suggests that genuine connection—love that is messy, painful, and deeply human—is incompatible with systems built on perfection and predictability. 

This theme becomes especially potent in the final chapters, where characters like Ava and Olympia rediscover emotional truth in rebellion, grief, and commitment to others outside the confines of utopian rules.

Resistance and the Ethics of Reform

The final act of the novel introduces a crucial theme: the ethics and mechanics of resistance. Each of the main characters takes a distinct path toward rebellion—Olympia from within the system, Shelby from afar, and Ava from below.

Their convergence reflects the multifaceted nature of resistance, requiring both insider knowledge and outsider action. The novel doesn’t glamorize revolt but instead presents it as a painful, often morally complex undertaking.

Olympia’s decision to document unethical practices, Shelby’s public whistleblowing, and Ava’s grassroots organizing show how resistance must be strategic, collective, and rooted in truth. 

Importantly, the novel also interrogates the idea of reformation: can something as fundamentally compromised as Inside be salvaged?

The answer seems cautiously optimistic. Olympia’s decision to restructure Inside into a transparent, consent-driven refuge signals a belief in the possibility of change without total destruction.

Yet, the emotional and ethical labor required to achieve this reform is immense. Resistance, the novel argues, is not just about opposition—it is about responsibility, accountability, and the willingness to imagine better systems even when those dreams come from ashes.