YA Pick: Not Even Bones

Not Even Bones
by Rebecca Schaeffer
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
2018
355 pages
ISBN: 9781328863546

Gruesome, grisly and ghastly but all in the best ways, Not Even Bones lives up to its pitched comparisons "'Dexter' meets 'This Savage Song.'" Schaeffer goes in deep (pun intended) in her descriptions of dissections, body parts, the human meat market, cutting skin off the body, and meat hunters who enjoy eating their products. It's as if Jeffrey Dahmer has been cloned and is in the body parts smuggling business!

Nita has grown up with dead bodies and learned to take them apart, piece by piece. Her mother marvels at her butchery skills, but then  Mom brings home a live boy that she intends to sell off piece by piece. He was being kept by a collector in Buenos Aires, but her mother grabbed him and begins posting his body parts for sale online. Nita is fine with chopping up dead bodies, but she cannot bring herself to cut off the boy's ears or toes, so she sets him free, giving him  a bus ticket and her phone.

Nita knows her mother will be furious. That boy was worth close to $1 million, and her mother doesn't like to lose money. Even worse, her mother's punishments are legendary. Nita is taken away and loses consciousness. She wakes up in a high tech cage beside another prisoner who tells her they are for sale in the worst meat market in the world. Nita always knew her mother could  be cruel, but she had no idea the depths of her evil. Her mother sold her for profit. Nita is an unnatural herself and her parts are worth far more than the boy she set free.

In a world where humans traffic in fresh body parts of unnatural species, kill or be killed is the new norm. Not Even Bones begins the story with Nita fighting for her freedom. When she escapes her cage, she is sure she's beat death, but the surprise twist at the end blows up the entire book setting the stage for book two. Kudos to Rebecca Schaeffer for the BAM! surprise twist that will leave teen readers reeling.

Recommended grade 9 and up. For readers who enjoy gore and blood and are not bothered by grisly details like livers, hearts, cutting off digits or skinning live subjects.

FTC Required Disclaimer: I received the book from the publisher. I did not receive monetary compensation for this review.

High School Pick: Because It Is My Blood

Because It Is My Blood
by Gabrielle Zevin
Farrar Straus Giroux
2012
368 pages

Available September 18,  2012 (expected publishing date)

Book page count and expected publication date from publisher's arc

In Book 2 of the Birthright series, Anya Balanchine finds herself just released from prison, the Liberty Children's Facility, and  she's ready to become a model citizen.  She wants to break the family mob ties to her uncle and their family's black market chocolate operation. She finds that much harder than she thought. When all the local high schools refuse her as a student due to her prison record and family background, Anya decides to travel to Mexico and learn more about the chocolate business from cocoa pod to black market chocolate bar. Things are not as quiet in Mexico as Anya expected and her heart is tested.

While she is away, she finds out that her family is in danger and she must leave Mexico immediately to save her little sister. Anya is still wounded from the fact that she's in love with Win, a boy she can never have. Win is still in love with her, too. Throughout the book, the reader keeps hoping they will be together for that "Romeo and Juliet" love story moment, but then things didn't turn out so right for Shakespeare's star-crossed duo either!

At home, Scarlet, Anya's bestie,  is in love with Gable and even Win seems to have a new girlfriend. Try as she might, Anya cannot escape the pull of the mob and the corruption of her family and the "chocolate wars." It seems every friend has secrets and everyone wants a piece of the chocolate business. When her closest alliances come into question, she will have to decide who her real friends are.  Who is the double agent? Who wants her dead?

All These Things I've Done (book 1) was compelling and complex but equally entertaining and exciting. Book 2, Because It Is My Blood , is not as taut and thrilling as book one. Anya is still one of the best and brightest heroines in young adult novels, but the storyline plodded along in places.

Readers of book one will want to read this book.

Highly recommended for fans of All These Things I've Done. Readers must read book one to understand Anya's story and background.

Grades 9-up. Mature situations, violence, mob violence, killings.

FTC Required Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher. I did not receive monetary compensation for this review.