Not Even Bones -- ONE OF MY FAVOURITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR

ABOUT

Title: Not Even Bones

Author: Rebecca Schaeffer 

Series: Untitled #1 

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 

Release Date: September 4th 2018 

Goodreads Page

Synopsis:

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.

I received an advance copy from the distributor in exchange for an honest review.

If you're not up for stories that involve heavily questionable morality, blood, violence, torture, et cetera, this book is seriously not for you. The comp for this book is pretty accurate -- Dexter meets This Savage Song and it has really scratched a literary itch that I didn't even know I had.

Not Even Bones follows Nita, a teenager hiding out in Peru with her mother. They have an uncommon family business after all -- selling the body parts of Unnaturals on the black market. Her mother acquires the bodies of Unnaturals -- people with powers like devouring pain to something as mundane as glowing -- and Nita dissects them, separating and packing the body parts up for sale. One day her mother brings home a boy who's still alive and she decides to help him escape. As punishment, her mother sells her instead. Nita must come to terms with her own morality and what she's willing to do to survive and escape.

One of the main themes of this book is morality. The business that Nita is involved in is unethical and morally questionable and her morals are tested with Fabricio, the boy that her mother brings back alive to sell off piece by piece. Those morals are pushed further as she grapples with her situation and the things she needs to do in order to survive and make it out of the black market she’s found herself in.

Kovit is a Zannie — an unnatural that survives on the physical pain of others. They are dangerous and monstrous. However, as we learn more about Kovit through Nita’s eyes, she sees the humanity in him in addition to the monstrous things he must do to survive. He has a conversation with Nita later in the book about how he grapples with his own morality as an Unnatural who must hurt people in order to survive and how he maintains a set of rules to prevent himself from becoming too monstrous.

The world built in this book is fascinating and very much an urban fantasy. This is one of those few books that takes place somewhere outside of the United States and takes place in Peru and Argentina for the most part. There’s an international coalition and police force to protect the Unnaturals who are harmless and apprehend the ones that are on the list for being highly dangerous. Unnaturals contain a multitude of creatures like vampires and kappas, etc. The black market exists because of the properties that their body parts can take on. Zannie Blood is an analgesic and helps numb pain. Powdered unicorn bone is a drug. And there are simply others who consume unnatural parts for the sheer thrill of it.

This book definitely shows the dark underbelly of the world as black markets do probably exist everywhere and we are simply unaware of them. The characters in this book are not good by a conventional sense, but they are so infinitely interesting and the author details a compelling tale that surrounds Nita. I enjoyed this book so much and I absolutely can't wait for people to read this book and also for the next book!!!!!

Happy Reading!