Courtney Summers does it again. I held on to this book for a long time, afraid to read it because of the dark subject matter. But I should not have, I should have pushed myself past how uncomfortable I felt and read this astonishing book. This book ripped me open and failed to stitch me back together, it still sits on my mind a week after finishing. The story is intriguing and Georgia, for all her naivete and faults, is a character you want to succeed. You want her to help Nora, to find out the truth, to save herself. Aspera, and the Hayes, are so insidious. They take the world that has been crafted for rich, white men and bend it to their will, assuring that nothing could ever touch them or their assets. It is a place of wealth and power, fueled by the world's elite. It is this idea that when you have money the law no longer applies and anything/everyone is yours to use as you wish. It is disgusting, heartbreaking, and rooted in truth. Our world treats girls and women as second class, as playthings, as chattel. From the moment you are born there is a target on your back, because somewhere there is someone who wants to hurt you and would most likely get away with it. Cleo tries to convince Georgia that her beauty is powerful, that she can use it to persuade others to do as she wishes. But in truth, what power does a sixteen year old really hold over adults, over people who are supposed to protect her, over someone who told her at thirteen that she was beautiful and should work at Aspera one day. What is it to be beautiful if it just marks you as a trophy to claim? The story of Nora trying to figure out her sisters death is upsetting, but in some ways the kindest part of this book. It is in Nora's search that we see some humanity, that we find a broken girl trying to make sense of a tragedy. She is angry at the world, including Georgia, for how Ashley died. Her police chief father is useless and her mother abandoned them years ago. So, all Ashley had was Nora, but instead she turned to other things. And the world seems to think that because she was a hard girl, a risky girl, that it meant she went asking for death. How is that fair? At what point do we blame our world and the monsters it breeds for what happens to young girls, instead of blaming them? When do we stop equating the worth of the girl to how rich, how beautiful, how well behaved she is? When does the the world begin to stand behind the victims and stop enabling the predators? Georgia was well written, because at times it was hard to like her, but it was never hard to understand her. Her desires, dreams, and desperation to leave her home for something better. Her mother tried to protect her, but in the end it only made Georgia blind to reality and easily taken in by words and wealth. She is guided by her hate for her mother and her need to be loved and accepted by the Hayes. She is innocent to the world, lost in a dream of what she could be, what her life could be. She misses the clues that maybe this world is not so welcoming to young women. She is flawed, just as Nora is, navigating a world that would harm them any chance it got. This is a world we know too well.
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