Category Archives: Young Adult/Teen 12-18

Top Ten Tuesday: Books You’re Probably Missing Out On

Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , , , ,

10 Books You're Probably Missing Out On

Top Ten Books You’re Probably Missing Out On

If you read a lot, just keeping up with your favorite authors can fill your shelves and all your spare reading hours. No matter how hard you try, some amazing books will slip past you without you realizing it. That’s why, for this Top Ten Tuesday, I’ve made this list of ten of my favorite books you’re probably missing out on.

Elsie Mae Has Something to Say by Nancy J. Cavanaugh

Honestly, this is probably one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. I fell head over heels in love with the story and its characters. It became one of those books I bought multiple copies of so I could give them as Christmas gifts last year. (Apparently this is how I get people I love to read the books I love. It pretty much works.) Seriously, though, if you like Southern fiction and coming-of-age type stories, this is one not to be missed. It’s SO good. You can find my review here.

Traitor’s Masque by Kenley Davidson

This whole series is AMAZING. I’m a huge fan of re-imagined fairy tales, but these are truly something special. I love the character complexity Davidson brings to the stories and the strong heroines each book features. This retelling of Cinderella actually gives its leading girl some action. Rather than being locked in a room waiting for her prince, she’s caught in a web of political intrigue. It’s so good. You can find my review here.

Dreadlands: Wolf Moon by Jaimie Engle

Dreadlands is another of the great books you’re probably missing out on. I love the way this story blends werewolves and Norse mythology. It’s fast-paced but with a sweet romance, and a perfect read for a rainy afternoon. The story is pretty clean, too, so it’s a great book for readers transitioning from middle grade (elementary-aged) books to young adult (middle/high school books). It’s kind of a How to Train Your Dragon meets Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater. Check out my review for more.

Freedom’s Just Another Word by Caroline Stellings

I’ve read several books by Caroline Stellings, and each one is better than the last. I’m never surprised to learn she’s won an award for writing. Her storytelling is strong and crisp, and her characters seem to pop right off the pages. I knew I would like this book for its references to music– the legendary Janis Joplin even appears in a few scenes– and I was so very right. But in addition to music, it’s rich in its 1970s, gritty Southern setting. I highly recommend it in my review, and I stand by it.

Between Shadows by Kathleen Cook Waldron

I can’t help but have a special place in my heart for this fantastic book. The author and I met on an Alaskan cruise– one of those serendipitous moments where we connected long before I learned she was a writer, and wrote children’s books to boot! Imagine how much more excited I was when I had the chance to read and review this great book. The cover shows the silhouette of the main character, Ari, who’s dealing with his unconventional grandfather’s sudden passing. Ari’s grandfather lived in a remote area and painted his log cabin like a rainbow. The story is about friendships and loss and is spunky and heartwarming. A definite favorite I don’t get to talk enough about.

Glass Girl by Laura Anderson Kurk

I feel like Glass Girl is exactly the kind of book I wanted to read in high school. It’s packed with emotion and oozing with cowboy romance. It follows Meg through the aftermath of a school shooting and a cross-country move that takes her to the Wyoming wilds. Meg is so relatable. I love this book. More about it in my review.

Viola Doyle or an Unconventional Gift by Amy Lynn Spitzley

I truly haven’t talked about this book in a long time, but it’s another great hidden gem. In this book, Spitzley keeps us guessing with wild adventures and totally unexpected turns of events. I loved every surprise and the quirky cast of characters in the Victorian-ish setting. So much fun! You’ll find my review here.

Behind These Hands by Linda Vigen Phillips

I feel almost like I’m cheating to include this book, since I only reviewed it a few weeks ago, but I don’t think it’s getting nearly the buzz it deserves. In powerful, moving verse, Phillips shows the heartache of a family in which two young boys are diagnosed with Batten’s Disease. I’d never heard of Batten’s before reading this book, and it hit me hard because of the amazing writing. I definitely identified with Claire as the oldest child and the one under pressure to hold things together. If you’re a fan of novels in verse, you need to read this one. Seriously. And if you’ve never read one, Behind These Hands is a great one to try.

Aquifer by Jonathan Friesen

The story world of this book was so intriguing. It’s kind of Waterworld (the Kevin Costner movie) meets The Giver. I loved the high stakes and creepy dystopian elements. Definitely a good pick for fans of Ally Condie or Scott Westerfeld. My review is here.

Running Lean by Diana Sharples

Okay, I’m sort of cheating again. I really haven’t talked about this book in a long time, and I enjoyed reading it so much. I reviewed Running Lean in 2013, but part of the reason I’m including it is because Diana Sharples has a new book out called Running Strong, which is on my To Be Read list! I love her writing – it’s clean, and the stories are strong. Another great author for younger teen readers.

Add to my list!

What are your favorite books that never get the praise they deserve? Tell me in the comments or leave me a link to your top ten list.

Sadie Blog Tour Q&A with Courtney Summers

Author Interview, Contemporary, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, News and Fun, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , ,

Courtney Summers writes gripping stories that tend to stick with you long after the last page is closed. When I listened to her speak at YALLfest in 2016, her commitment to give girls a strong voice really stuck out to me. When I had the opportunity to participate in this blog tour with Wednesday Books, I jumped at the chance to talk more with Courtney Summers about her latest book, Sadie. I’ll introduce the book and then move straight into what I learned from the author.

About Sadie by Courtney Summers

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Sadie hasn’t had an easy life. Growing up on her own, she’s been raising her sister Mattie in an isolated small town, trying her best to provide a normal life and keep their heads above water.

But when Mattie is found dead, Sadie’s entire world crumbles. After a somewhat botched police investigation, Sadie is determined to bring her sister’s killer to justice and hits the road following a few meagre clues to find him.

When West McCray—a radio personality working on a segment about small, forgotten towns in America—overhears Sadie’s story at a local gas station, he becomes obsessed with finding the missing girl. He starts his own podcast as he tracks Sadie’s journey, trying to figure out what happened, hoping to find her before it’s too late.

Q&A with Courtney Summers

Do you have a favorite scene, quote, or moment from Sadie?

My favorite scene is a spoiler, but my favorite quote is this: “I wish this was a love story.”

What gave you the idea for Sadie?

One of the things that inspired Sadie was the way we consume violence against women and girls as a form of entertainment. When we do that, we reduce its victims to objects, which suggests a level of disposability–that a girl’s pain is only valuable to us if we’re being entertained by it. What is our responsibility to us? I really wanted to explore that and the way we dismiss missing girls and what the cost of that ultimately is.

Can you talk a little bit about how you created the setting for Sadie?

 Sadie is set in various fictional towns and cities across the state of Colorado and Sadie, as a character herself, was integral in creating those places. I had to make sure to put her in environments she could not only respond to, but would reveal her headspace and past to the reader.

What was the most surprising thing you learned in creating your characters?

When I first started Sadie, I was extremely skeptical of West– he had to prove himself to readers over the course of his narrative and given the nature of his job, I was curious to see where writing him would take me. I really loved the way his arc unfolded. I wasn’t necessarily surprised by it, but more gratified by it than I realized I would be.

What was the hardest part of the story to write?

There wasn’t a particular part that was harder to write than any others—writing a book like Sadie requires occupying a dark emotional headspace all the way through, so it was all a bit tough to write in that sense.

Sadie is told through two points of view: Sadie, as she looks for her sister, and West’s podcasts as he follows her story. Did you experience more difficulty writing one or the other, or did you like writing in one form more? How much of the novel did you write in chronological order, and how much did you jump around?

I enjoyed both of them. Writing Sadie’s perspective was very familiar to me because all of my books feature an intensely close first person, female point-of-view. Writing West’s perspective, the podcast format, proved a little more challenging. Not so much because of the way it was written (scripts) but because each episode had to propel Sadie’s narrative forward and give us a different way of looking at the things she went through.

So far, I’ve only ever been able to write in chronological order!

Was this how you always envisioned the book or did it change as you wrote it?

Regina Spektor said something really interesting about writing songs that I’ve always loved and related to as an author. She said, “[A]s soon as you try and take a song from your mind into piano and voice and into the real world, something gets lost and it’s like a moment where, in that moment, you forget how it was and it’s this new way. And then when you make a record, even those ideas that you had, then those get all turned around and changed. So in the end, I think, it just becomes its own thing and really I think a song could be recorded a million different ways and so what my records are, it just happened like that, but it’s not like, this is how I planned it from the very beginning because I have no idea, I can’t remember.”

I feel something similar when writing– the heart of my idea remains intact, but the way it takes its ultimate form is always a little different (or even a lot different) than I might have been expecting, which makes it difficult to recall the starting point. But that’s okay as long as the heart is still there and you’re satisfied with and believe in what you’ve created.

About Courtney Summers

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Courtney Summers was born in Belleville, Ontario, 1986. At age 14, she dropped out of high school. At age 18, she wrote her first novel. Cracked Up to Be was published in 2008, when she was 22 and went on to win the 2009 CYBIL award in YA fiction. Since then, she’s published four more critically acclaimed books: Some Girls Are, Fall for Anything, This is Not a Test and All the Rage, as well as an e-novella, Please Remain Calm which is a sequel to This is Not a Test. Her new novel, Sadie, is available now wherever books are sold. #findsadie
In 2016, Courtney was named one of Flare Magazine’s 60 under 30.

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Classics You Should Actually Read This Year

Lists, News and Fun, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , , , , , ,

Talking about the Classics

I have a love-hate relationship with literary classics. Is that kind of the same for everyone? I love, love, LOVE To Kill a Mockingbird, but omg please do not even get me started on Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Why are there people who like that book???? Just no. It’s not for me.

Ditto with Wuthering Heights and Great Expectations. I just could not get into those. Sorry. I know they’re favorites of literary geniuses and other readers.

But my list of favorite classics is pretty long, and I almost never get to talk about them on the blog because there are so many amazing books coming out every week, I can’t even keep up with those. So today, as my post this Top Ten Tuesday, a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, I’m jumping ship, away from current releases, and swimming on back to list a few of my favorite classics in honor of the whole Back-to-School season!

First, though… did you notice anything different about The Story Sanctuary today??? I have a brand new header image custom designed for me, and I LOVE it. Let me know what you think about it by leaving me a comment or finding me on Twitter (@story_sanctuary).

Okay, back to classics! If you’re headed back to school, I hope you get to read some of these in class this year, because reading great books for a grade is kind of like discovering a favorite food is actually good for you. Yay! Bonus. But even if these babies aren’t assigned or your school days are done (woo-hoo!), they’re worth checking out for the sheer enjoyment of the stories.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

This is without a doubt my number one favorite classic. I’ve probably read it five or six times, which for any book, isn’t that high a number for me, but is pretty huge for classics. I love the way Lee shows us everything that’s happening through Scout’s perspective. Often she’s totally unaware of the significance of events around her – like when she and Jem go visit Atticus at the jail and the mob approaches him. Scout has no idea how scary this should be. She only knows these are men who, in the daylight, are her classmates’ fathers who would never hurt her. But there are enough clues that we pick up on the bigger story and the drama or danger ourselves. So. Good.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I think one of my favorite things about this book is Fitzgerald’s goal that it be written so that anyone could read and understand it easily. I love that, and it makes this novel a quick read. I love the themes about true love and friendship and I’m always gripped by the destructiveness of the characters’ selfish behavior. (Okay, that sounds dark, but hopefully it makes sense.)

Watership Down by Richard by Richard Adams

I. Love. This. Book. It was a genre-defying book when it was published. A serious book about rabbits. Yes! And it’s amazing. Fierce, warrior rabbits and small oracle rabbits. Brilliant characters that I remember years after I’ve last read the book.

Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

If you know me, you’re only surprised this didn’t come earlier in the list. I’m not a huge Austen junkie. I love this book, but I somehow never manage to get around to reading her other novels. And actually– true story– I did not like Pride and Prejudice the first time I read it in high school. Mostly I think I hated the format in which we had to read it, but that’s another story. The synopsis is I felt like it cheapened my experience reading the book. Anyway, after I graduated and my sister fell in love with the book, I went back and read Pride and Prejudice again and found myself totally getting lost in the story of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. (And yes, I love the movie. ONLY the BBC version, though.)

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

This is another big favorite. I love that Sewell wrote this during a time when it was this big ground-breaking idea that horses have feelings. It’s one of those “this will never sell” kinds of stories that reminds us that heart and courage are pretty much always worth reading about.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

I have kind of a love-hate relationship with this book, too. I love, love, love Francie and her family. I cried so hard at some of the tragic moments in the book. The writing is delicious. But I feel like I wanted a different ending. There’s a thing that happens toward the end, something that goes wrong, and she gets a letter that’s supposed to explain it. I kind of never really bought into that explanation. I needed there to be more. More backstory, more explaining, more reasons, more something. I don’t know. But other than that moment, I truly love this book and Betty Smith’s writing. In fact, I like another book of hers called Joy in the Morning even better than A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, so I probably should have swapped and focused on that one instead. It’s lesser known, but shorter and happier.

The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton

This is another one I’ve read a bunch of times. It has kind of a circular thing going on where at the end of the book, Ponyboy (I love the wild names in the story) wrestles with all that’s happened and ends up writing it down for a school project (sounds more contrived than it feels in the book) and the last line of the story is the same as the opening line of the book, as if he’s beginning now to write the whole tale. The Outsiders is the first book that made me want to become a writer myself.

Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton

The way the story is formatted is a bit unusual. I went through a period of evangelical zeal about this book, trying to get everyone I knew to read it, and a couple people were so thrown by the way it’s written that they couldn’t get into it. (Dialogue is often not in quotes, for instance, but set apart after a colon.) I see authors bending those kinds of rules more now in other books, so I wonder if Cry would be more easily received now. At any rate, I loved the story and got completely lost in the South African landscape as we followed a man desperate to find his son in Johannesburg.

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

Forget the Disney movie version. It’s cute and all, but totally sells this story short. Kipling is a master storyteller and his way of describing things is so rich and fun. It’s a fairly quick read, too. Definitely on my list to read with my littlest when she gets a bit older.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

I didn’t read this one until just a few years ago, but I really enjoyed it. The characters stuck with me– flawed as they are– and I can still picture some of the most climactic scenes in my mind. Plus, for some reason, I have a thing for stories about natural disasters. I don’t know. My family is the type to hole up during a hurricane and watch Twister. (True story. We did this last year during a big storm.)

So there you have it. Those are my top ten picks for classics to read this year. I hope at least some of them still find their way into classrooms. I’m hoping to read at least one with my older girl this year at home, too.

What are your favorite classics?

Did any of your favorites make the list? Any of mine that you just could not get through? Leave a comment and tell me about it!

Review: A Touch of Gold by Annie Sullivan

Book Review and Content, Fantasy, Romance, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , , ,

A Touch of Gold
Annie Sullivan
Blink
Published on August 14, 2018

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

About A Touch of Gold
King Midas once had the ability to turn all he touched into gold. But after his gift—or curse—almost killed his daughter, Midas relinquished The Touch forever. Ten years later, Princess Kora still bears the consequences of her father’s wish: her skin shines golden, rumors follow her everywhere she goes, and she harbors secret powers that are getting harder to hide.

Kora spends her days locked in the palace, concealed behind gloves and veils, trying to ignore the stares and gossip of courtiers. It isn’t until a charming young duke arrives that Kora realizes there may be someone out there who doesn’t fear her or her curse. But their courtship is disrupted when a thief steals precious items from the kingdom, leaving the treasury depleted and King Midas vulnerable. Thanks to her unique ability to sense gold, Kora is the only one who can track the thief down. As she sails off on her quest, Kora learns that not everything is what it seems—not thieves, not pirates, and not even curses. She quickly discovers that gold—and the power it brings—is more dangerous than she’d ever believed.

Midas learned his lesson at a price. What will Kora’s journey cost?

My Review
I can never resist an unusual myth or fairytale retelling, so when A Touch of Gold caught my eye, I knew I needed to get ahold of a copy. I found it to be a cool reimagining of a familiar tale.

Right at the beginning, I wasn’t too sure about the book, though. The prologue is long and kind of confusing. It kind of sets up the story by recounting the story of Midas and introducing Kora, but I think a lot of that information could have been included in the early chapters instead. That would have made the opening read more smoothly for me.

Once I got into the story, though, I liked it a lot more. I wasn’t sure about Hettie, Kora’s lady-in-waiting, who at first seems super selfish and complains about EVERYTHING. Eventually she finds some things to be happy about and even stops seeming quite so selfish, which was great. She definitely grew on me as the story progressed.

I worried a little bit as I passed the halfway point, that A Touch of Gold was going to be a straightforward, boring story where it came to the romance. And then, boom! PLOT TWIST! Everything changed. It wasn’t an unpredictable move, but it was a really satisfying one. I loved the story even more after that point.

All in all, I’m glad I read this one. A Touch of Gold proved to be a quick read and an entertaining one at that. If you’re like me, and you can’t resist a retelling that’s a little more unusual, then resist no more – get you a copy of this book.
You might also be interested in A Touch of Gold if you liked Whisper of the Tide by Sarah Tolcser or Goddess Tithe by Anne Elisabeth Stengl.

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Cultural Elements
Kora’s mother was Sunisan. (I’m not sure what ethnicity this maps to, but I didn’t look much beyond a quick Google search. The original story about King Midas would have taken place in Asia in what’s now Turkey.)

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
Brief kissing between a young man and young woman.

Spiritual Content
Dionysus cursed Kora’s father so that everything he touched turned to gold. He was told he could reverse the curse by washing everything he’d turned in a river. He only partially completed this task and bears some consequences.
Violent Content
A ruthless pirate called Captain Skulls collects human skulls on his ship. A couple scenes show beheaded bodies. Kora and her friends start a brawl in a tavern to distract their enemies.
Pirates battle Kora’s companions. Some brief descriptions of peril, fighting, and injuries.

Drug Content
Kora and her friends go into a seedy tavern.

Review: Even if the Sky Falls by Mia Garcia

Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Romance, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , ,

Even if the Sky Falls
Mia Garcia
Katherine Tegen Books
Published on May 10, 2016

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About Even if the Sky Falls
All she needs is one night to be anyone she wants.

Julie is desperate for a change. So she heads to New Orleans with her youth group to rebuild houses and pretend her life isn’t a total mess. But between her super-clingy team leader and her way-too-chipper companions, Julie feels more trapped than ever.

In a moment of daring, she ditches her work clothes for DIY fairy wings and heads straight into the heart of Mid-Summer Mardi Gras, where she locks eyes with Miles, an utterly irresistible guy with a complicated story of his own. And for once, Julie isn’t looking back. She jumps at the chance to see the real New Orleans, and in one surreal night, they dance under the stars, share their most shameful secrets, and fall in love.

But their adventure takes an unexpected turn when an oncoming hurricane changes course. As the storm gains power and Julie is pulled back into chaos she finds pretending everything is fine is no longer an option.

My Review
I’m a little torn in how I feel about this book. On the one hand, Julie’s story drew me in immediately. Obviously she’s recovering from something intense, but we don’t learn right away what’s happened to wreck her so deeply.

Then she gets this opportunity to escape her past completely for a little while. I loved the characters in the band she meets and especially Miles. It only took like half a second for me to start hoping Miles and Julie would get together.

The hurricane descriptions were pretty wild. As a Floridian, I’ve weathered several storms. I’m not sure I buy that so much happened from a Category 2 storm, but I’m sure it depends on a lot of factors, like which side of the storm hit them and that sort of thing. Certainly no matter what category it is, being outside in a hurricane is really dangerous!

What I really struggled with, though, is the ending. The romance gets resolved, and that was great. But all the way along Julie flashes back to what happened at home before the mission trip, and I think I wanted those two worlds to collide more completely. I was hoping her family or her brother would make an appearance at the end and we’d know she’d turned a corner even in her ability to deal with things at home. Not that everything had to be fixed, just some kind of scene tying things together.

Other than that, I’m glad I read it. I hate that Julie had such a bad experience on her mission trip, because I have such fun memories of my own trips. But considering what was going on in her life, it made perfect sense that she would feel alienated and unable to connect with the enthusiasm of the rest of the group.

The descriptions of New Orleans were fun and vivid – I felt like I was there, and I’ve been craving beignets since reading about them. Yum!

Even if the Sky Falls is a great pick for fans of The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E. Smith or Starry Eyes by Jenn Bennett.Recommended for Ages 16 up.

Cultural Elements
Julie is Latina and talks about visiting relatives in Puerto Rico.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Infrequent use of extreme profanity.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between a boy and girl. At one point a boy and girl go swimming in their underwear. References to sex. One scene shows some nudity and lets us know the characters have had sex without any graphic details.

Julie’s mission leader clearly wants a relationship with her. He’s clingy and clearly makes her uncomfortable, since he seems willfully blind to her “no” signals. He doesn’t assault her or anything like that, but he does make her feel gross.

Spiritual Content
Julie’s family is Catholic and she’s on a mission trip with a church group, but it’s clear she has a lot of doubts in terms of her own faith. She’s bitter and depressed and feels like the church people don’t understand her and are too happy-happy.

Violent Content
Someone tries to choke Julie. She escapes.

The storm beats Julie and her friend up pretty badly. There’s one scene where they battle the elements, and things look pretty grim. Some details about injuries. It’s definitely a perilous situation.

Drug Content
Julie and her companion drink beer at a party and later share a bottle of wine.

Review: The Brink of Darkness by Jeff Giles

Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , ,

The Brink of Darkness
Jeff Giles
Bloomsbury
Published on July 3, 2018

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About The Brink of Darkness
Things have changed for seventeen-year-old Zoe ever since the otherworldly events that brought her together with the mysterious bounty hunter she calls X. In order to save Zoe and her family, X has done the unthinkable – he’s given up his freedom and returned to captivity in the Lowlands.

X is determined to break the lords’ hold on him once and for all, but being stripped of his power pushes him toward a darkness he’s never experienced and a past he’s never known. The secrets that surface could be the key to reuniting X and Zoe… or they could mean the destruction of everything they have been fighting for.

My Review
So many great lines! Pretty much any section told from Zoe’s point-of-view is packed with fantastic side comments and banter between her and her friends. X’s sections aren’t quite as peppery, but I loved the Ukrainian for all his snarky one liners.

So much heart. The Brink of Darkness is, above all else, a story about true love. Both the love between X and Zoe and love of family—birth family, and family you make for yourself.

I struggled with the amount of violence portrayed in this book. Some scenes show graphic torture and reference some pretty horrible events. If I didn’t like the other elements of the story so much, I don’t think I could have finished it. Even though I did, this probably isn’t a good choice for sensitive readers. If I had known how much was in the book, I probably wouldn’t have tried to review it.

Which isn’t to say I’m sorry I read it. I don’t know. I’m really torn. I really didn’t like the amount of violence, but I am a total sucker for a book with great banter and such fun characters. I’m glad it had that quality. See my comments below for additional notes on content.

Recommended for Ages 16 up.

Cultural Elements
Zoe’s best friend Val is a lesbian. Zoe’s family members are vegans.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Infrequent use of strong profanity. One odd thing about the book is the lowercase use of “god” throughout the whole story, even when spoken by a priest.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between man and woman. References to sex, but no description. (Two people lie down in a boat together. They remove shirts and then the scene cuts away from them.)

Spiritual Content
The Lowlands (sort of like Hell) is a place where people who’ve committed heinous acts find themselves in the afterlife. It’s governed by lords who have some supernatural powers, but are themselves dead humans. Several characters reference a Higher Power (capitalized in the story) who is ultimately in charge, but only intervenes in the direst situations.

I found it odd that the story uses a lowercase for God versus uppercase for the Higher Power of the Lowlands.

Violent Content
So. Much.

Several scenes show torture in pretty graphic detail. The methods used to punish inhabitants of the Lowlands are pretty harsh. This is not one for sensitive readers. I had a really hard time with some of the descriptions and skimmed over a couple passages. At one point X is under the governance of a woman who thrives on torturing others. That part was too much for me.

Drug Content
None.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.