If what gripped you in Gather the Daughters was watching girls like Janey and Vanessa push back against a theocracy of fathers who police their bodies and stories, Atwood’s classic will hit the same nerve. Like the island elders who insist the world beyond is unlivable, Gilead enforces a myth to justify control. Following Offred’s quiet acts of defiance and the underground resistance she brushes against echoes the way the daughters begin to compare notes after those feral summers and realize the men’s rules are built on lies.

You’ll recognize the trap: three sisters are raised on a remote island by controlling parents who teach that the outside world is poison—much like the elders in Gather the Daughters insisting everything beyond the shore is ruined. As with Janey’s radical self-denial and Vanessa’s tentative questioning, the sisters test the rules when strangers arrive, and the house of ritualized ‘cures’ begins to fracture. The suffocating atmosphere and bodily menace mirror the daughters’ summers of wild freedom giving way to chilling obedience.

If the most compelling part for you was watching the girls form secret bonds during those wild summers only to face arranged futures, you’ll be drawn to Tierney’s fight through her community’s deadly ‘grace year.’ Like the island’s sanctioned cruelties in Gather the Daughters, the grace year ritual weaponizes superstition to control girls’ bodies and choices. The way Tierney clings to scraps of sisterhood and learns who to trust echoes Vanessa and Caitlin comparing whispered truths to chip at the elders’ power.

If the intimate, closed-world focus of the island drew you in—where a child’s entire reality is curated by unreliable adults—this will resonate. Like the fathers in Gather the Daughters who insist the mainland is a wasteland, Peggy’s father spirits her into the forest and convinces her civilization is gone. Watching Peggy piece together the lies and reclaim her own narrative offers the same close-quarters dread and quiet revelation that made Vanessa’s dawning awareness so powerful.

If you were captivated by the novel’s inner gaze—Janey’s austere resolve, Caitlin’s fear and curiosity, Vanessa’s conflicted loyalty—Cline’s portrait of Evie slipping into a cult will feel hauntingly familiar. As with the daughters’ elders, the cult’s charisma thrives on hunger, secrecy, and ritual. The book’s focus on how a lonely girl’s needs are manipulated parallels the island’s grooming and the way small permissions (those fleeting summers) mask deeper violations.