Not Even Bones by Rebecca Schaeffer (ARC review)

TITLE: Not Even Bones

AUTHOR: Rebecca Schaeffer

RELEASED: September 4th 2018 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

GENRE: Teens + YA Fantasy

Nita wasn’t sure why she laughed. It wasn’t a normal laugh, it was a little high-pitched and hysterical. She was standing in a room full of dying people, asking someone to torture a crime lord so she can steal his money. When has this happened? How had her life ended up like this?

Can you imagine a world in which monsters roam free as part of society? Welcome to Nita’s life. Not Even Bones is the book I didn’t even know I wanted! I loved every single minute of this. It was completely refreshing to read a book that isn’t cut and dried black and white moral choices. There are many times Nita and other characters have to make a decision between bad and worse. It definitely isn’t your average monster story.

A note from the author: “Many will call my main characters monsters. Many will call them villains.

They would be right.

I wrote this book for the people who watched movies as children and screamed, “why don’t you just kill the bad guy already???” For the people who watched heroes proselytize on screen and said, “It’s not that simple.” For the people who watched the villains with fascination and whispered softly, where the normal, good, proper people wouldn’t hear, “I want to see their story.”

This, my friends, is their story.

If you’re still interested, then, please, crack open the cover and delve into the darkness. But you’ve been warned.

Here be monsters. “

She imagined sliding the scalpel through his flesh, how there would be resistance, and then it would come easy once it had parted. Like the surface tension of water.

The imagery and description put you right there alongside Nita THE WHOLE WAY through her journey! Very gory and delightfully dark, we’re shown the darkness that lives inside monsters both with their unique sets of morals, and those without. I found myself cheering on several different characters, and totally engrossed with the story. Nita has standards which she lives by, until she’s thrust into the trade as a commodity, rather than an outsider. She thinks she knows what’s happening, but, along her journey of self-discovery, finds that things aren’t as they’ve always seemed…

Slowly, piece by piece, she went through the full dissection until there was nothing left unpackaged or unlabeled. Not even bones.

Then, when I thought this was going to be a standalone, I read that cliffhanger! I gasped many times throughout the story, but that knocked the breath right out of me.. What could possibly come next?! Schaeffer has left me with some questions, and I can’t wait to read book 2!

Dexter meets This Savage Song in this dark fantasy about a girl who sells magical body parts on the black market — until she’s betrayed.

Nita doesn’t murder supernatural beings and sell their body parts on the internet—her mother does that. Nita just dissects the bodies after they’ve been “acquired.” But when her mom brings home a live specimen, Nita decides she wants out — dissecting living people is a step too far.

But when she tries to save her mother’s victim, she ends up sold on the black market in his place — because Nita herself is a supernatural being. Now Nita is on the other side of the bars, and there is no line she won’t cross to escape and make sure no one can ever capture her again.

Nita did a good deed, and it cost her everything. Now she’s going to do a lot of bad deeds to get it all back.

Thank you so much to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for providing me with an ARC. All quotes are taken from an ARC and may not match the final release.