Title: Girls With Sharp Sticks
Author: Suzanne Young
Genre: YA Contemporary, Science Fiction
Edition/Pages: Ebook, 400 pages
Goodreads page

ARC provided by Simon Teen via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book is being released on March 19, 2019.

Synopsis

This follows a group of young woman at a prestigious boarding school designed to teach them how to be the “best of society” – beautiful, proper, and obedient. But the school has dark secrets. Our main character, Mena, and her friends are determined to discover those secrets, and in turn, who they really are.

My Review

Overview

This is a little hard to describe without getting mildly spoiler-y. And I highly recommend going into this with as little information as possible! There aren’t any blatant spoilers in this review, but some of my thoughts may give you hints/ideas about the reveals.

This felt like the YA love child between Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and The Handmaids Tale by Margret Atwood. This is definitely not going to be for everyone – especially considering those are both polarizing books. But I loved the themes in here.

HUGE content warnings for abuse and sexism. This also gets quite graphic, so if blood and violence makes you queasy, you may want to avoid this one.

What I Liked

1. The friendship between these girls was so well done. At no point was there any cattiness or competition. These girls supported each other through thick and thin. It was such a beautiful representation of strong, supportive friendships.
2. This did a really good job of building suspense. This book isn’t a thriller by any means but the setting and lack of information give so much suspense to the story. For a lot of the book you’re questioning everything.
3. The themes in here were fantastic. Not only was this a feminist story but it also brings to question what makes us human. It’s one of my personal favorite themes, so I may be slightly biased, but I thought it was really well done.

What I Didn’t Like

1. The reveal became pretty obvious around the half way point (and I had guessed it even earlier). So the big reveal wasn’t as shocking as it could have been.
2. The ending did feel a little heaving handed. And it is extremely open ended! I have no idea if there is a sequel coming but there are a lot of loose ends left.

 

---

 

Overall I flew through this story. I was so captivated by the world and trying to figure out all the threads. And it covers some of my all-time favorite themes. I definitely recommend checking this out!