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.

Dystopian Pick: Drought

Drought
by Pam Bachorz
Egmont, 2011
400 pages

Following on the heels of her success with Candor, Bachorz enters a new and frightening world--a world that time forgot, or at least appears to have forgotten. Ruby and her mother live with a small group of Congregants who have settled in the woods. Here they are able to practice their religion without interference; however, their day-to-day existence is decided by Darwin West, an evil man who beats them into subservience and forces them to work and live in conditions few could survive. The Congregants have a secret weapon--when Ruby realizes her blood has the power to save, she begins putting drops of her own blood in the community's water supply. Not only does her blood have the power to sustain them, it has the power to make them have long lives--some of the Congregants have been in the woods over 200 years.

When a young overseer appears to have feelings of sympathy for her group, Ruby dreams of escape. Will she be able to leave her mother and all that she has ever known for the unknown? Will she be able to leave the Congregants without her life-saving blood?

Deeply moving and greatly disturbing, this novel will leave an impression. Like Lowrey's The Giver, Drought brings up ethical and moral questions and skirts religious beliefs held by the community of followers. Readers will be talking about Drought for days, maybe even months after reading it. Unlike her first novel, Drought is not just a young adult novel--it is one that may make it into the "Required Reading Lists" at the high school level.

I read Drought and thought about it for two weeks before reviewing it. I had to let the story sink in and think about its complexity. While appearing to be a ya novel, it is so much more.

Highly recommended grades 9-12. Mature readers at grade 8 may attempt this book, but they may not realize the provocative theme and symbolism. Violence.


Available January 25, 2011.

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