[Joint ARC review] Another Little Piece by Kate Karyus Quinn

 Another Little PieceKate Karyus Quinn
June 11th, 2013
Harperteen

Arc Provided by Book Junkee's giveaway. Thank you!

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The spine-tingling horror of Stephen King meets an eerie mystery worthy of Sara Shepard's Pretty Little Liars series in Kate Karyus Quinn's haunting debut.

On a cool autumn night, Annaliese Rose Gordon stumbled out of the woods and into a high school party. She was screaming. Drenched in blood. Then she vanished.

A year later, Annaliese is found wandering down a road hundreds of miles away. She doesn't know who she is. She doesn't know how she got there. She only knows one thing: She is not the real Annaliese Rose Gordon.

Now Annaliese is haunted by strange visions and broken memories. Memories of a reckless, desperate wish . . . a bloody razor . . . and the faces of other girls who disappeared. Piece by piece, Annaliese's fractured memories come together to reveal a violent, endless cycle that she will never escape—unless she can unlock the twisted secrets of her past.

 First words that ran through my mind after finishing Another Little Piece: poetic, haunting and riveting.  Most of the reviews I saw from people that didn't like the book was that the book was confusing.  I felt that the book was not that confusing.  It was a story of a girl searching for something and making bad choices.  I felt that it was kind of a horrifying version of Ground Hog day meet Pinocchio.  Anna, the main character, had to live out the lives of other girls over and over searching for something that made her real.  Instead she was destroying their lives the way her life had been taken and destroyed.  Doomed to repeat this process over and over until she was willing to sacrifice herself for love.  Even though the story was very horrific and terrifying it stuck with me days after reading.  This book is also about love and redemption and I think that is what stuck with me.  I routed for Anna even though she is kind the anti-heroine.  For me this was one of those books I could not put down and then was like what did I just read, I really liked this book even if the subject matter was questionable.  This book asked questions like what you do to live forever and how far would you go to escape the life you were never meant to live.  I give Another Little Piece four very solid laser and highly recommend this book.

 Let me preface this review with this, there are some things left unanswered by this book. Who is the Physician, really? What role do his bruja sister's take? Why do they do what they do? This lack of understanding didn't really take away from the book, at least for me. The story had a narrow focus on just Anna and I respected that. Sometimes the overarching storyline doesn't need to be there for engrossing storytelling.

The book was written well, lacking the clunk I've come to expect from YA novels. Everything is a mystery up until the end, but the disjointed discovery of who Anna was and who she could become was as much an experience for me as it was for her.

This book is pretty gross. There's cannibalism, rape, pedophilia and that's just scratching the surface. Within the first fifty pages someone has one of the most real descriptions of sex I've seen in literature thus far and follows that up with some murder and khaleesi style heart eating. Trigger warnings abound. Still, the prose moves through this all artfully, smoothing the edges.

My love for this book has grown over the past few days. It was unique and interesting, blending the different elements together fluidly and creating something that will ultimately set the bar for the things that come after. I can't wait to see what this author can come up with next and I hope it lives up to the precedent.