Overreliance on metaphor to express Juliette’s jaw-dropping surprise wears thin: “My mouth is sitting on my kneecaps. Fast-paced action scenes convey imminent danger vividly, but there’s little sense of a broader world here. The ending falls flat as the plot devolves into comic-book territory. But Adam belongs to a resistance movement he helps Juliette escape to their stronghold, where she finds that she’s not the only one with superhuman abilities. Unfortunately, he’s a soldier under orders from Warner, a power-hungry 19-year-old. Adam, it turns out, is immune to her deadly touch. After months of isolation, her captors suddenly give her a cellmate-Adam, a drop-dead gorgeous guy. Juliette’s journal holds her tortured thoughts in an attempt to repress memories of the horrific act that landed her in a cell. Juliette was torn from her home and thrown into an asylum by The Reestablishment, a militaristic regime in control since an environmental catastrophe left society in ruins.

So much fun readers will stay up all night to finish it.Ī dystopic thriller joins the crowded shelves but doesn't distinguish itself. The cosmopolitan world is casually and naturally diverse Ness lacks racial descriptors. While immediate threats are neutralized by the end, bigger threats loom. Ness’ development from being a self-described coward is hard earned and connects to powerful themes of relationships (including friendships) and overcoming manipulation. The matter-of-fact tone of the humor effectively keeps the laughs from undermining the scary story elements. The worldbuilding’s a dream: The magical rules are revealed clearly and concisely when relevant, and the quirky alternate setting maintains internal consistency and is frequently revealed in pithy, hilarious ways. Ness must then figure out the secrets people are willing to kill her to keep hidden.

With her position already in jeopardy, she ends up accidentally sucked into a targeted conspiracy that throws her together with a living Nightmare.

To avoid becoming homeless, she works for the Friends of the Restful Soul, though she’s always messing up due to her lack of piety and extreme fear trauma responses to Nightmares. Ness came to Newham after her older sister turned into a giant spider and ate their father. In the fictional city of Newham, bribes, shootouts, and corruption are widespread, and the water supply is laced with a drug that keeps people from dreaming so that they don’t wake up transformed into the worst thing they can imagine. A girl who escapes being collateral damage in an attack must face her overwhelming fears.

Ya novel by rebecca schaeffer