Through intense, diarylike chapters chronicling Charlie's journey, the author captures the brutal and heartbreaking way 'girls who write their pain on their bodies' scar and mar themselves, either succumbing or surviving. Feeling rejected, Charlie, an artist, is drawn into a destructive new relationship with her sexy older co-worker, a 'semifamous' local musician who's obviously a junkie alcoholic. But things don't go as planned in the Arizona desert, because sweet Mikey just wants to be friends. After spending time in treatment with other young women like her-who cut, burn, poke, and otherwise hurt themselves-Charlie is released and takes a bus from the Twin Cities to Tucson to be closer to Mikey, a boy she 'like-likes' but who had pined for Ellis instead. Seventeen-year-old Charlie Davis, a white girl living on the margins, thinks she has little reason to live: her father drowned himself her bereft and abusive mother kicked her out her best friend, Ellis, is nearly brain dead after cutting too deeply and she's gone through unspeakable experiences living on the street. May the sequel hurry.Īfter surviving a suicide attempt, a fragile teen isn't sure she can endure without cutting herself. Sharp and breathless, full of anger and strength.

Contrary to the reality of early modern Europe, all characters default to white. This rich tapestry of intrigue, betrayal, trauma, protection, old religion, and historically based politics resurrects the urgency and depth of the His Fair Assassin series-but must be read after the others (“new duology” label notwithstanding). Will Sybella and Genevieve find each other, or even learn each other’s information, before things come crashing down? They alternate narrating in first-person present, with great immediacy. Danger’s everywhere-rape, murder-and love is a risk. Sybella and Genevieve have brilliant skills-killing, scheming, spying, protecting, and sometimes finding Mortain’s grace-but everyone who holds power abuses it terribly. Meanwhile, Genevieve, another assassin/daughter of Mortain, languishes in an undercover placement in France, instruction-less-so she builds herself a plan. Having changed the nature of death (incomprehensibly) in Mortal Heart (2014), LaFevers ignores that and focuses on Sybella’s doubt about how to serve her father, Mortain-the god of Death-without the black marques that previously showed her whom to kill. The duchess promises, when queen, to protect Sybella’s young sisters from their brother’s house, where the men molested Sybella ( Dark Triumph, 2013). Sybella, a trained assassin, escorts Brittany’s duchess to France to marry King Charles. History, intrigue, and peril in 15th-century Brittany and France.

Courting darkness by robin lafevers