Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Being a Teenager Actually Can Get Worse: #Read26Indy Books 9 & 10: XVI and Truth by Julia Karr


Everyone knows what's expected of a girl when she turns sixteen. They don't call it "sex-teen" for nothing. We're all supposed to be so excited about sex and willing to do whatever with practically any guy who asks. But the whole sex thing was definitely not what I wanted. I'd seen more than just the Health and Sociology vids at school. I knew girls hadn't always been treated like that, making me wish I'd been born one hundred years earlier. 

In the future, in a world where we have settled the moon, teenage girls get a XVI wrist tattoo when they turn 16, telling the world that they are now fair game. Mass media tells society girls become boy crazy at 16, and if something bad happens to them, it's probably their fault. Our heroine, Nina, knows better. She knows there's something wrong with the controlling world she lives in, with the societal tiers that determine who someone can be, with the constant surveillance and fear. She also senses something is wrong with a program called FeLS (Female Liaison Specialists), supposedly a way for selected 16 year old girls to move up a few societal tiers and serve as governmental ambassadors, though few of those girls are ever seen again. Nina lives with her mother, her sister, and occasionally her mother's horrible and abusive married boyfriend (and father of her sister) Ed.

Then the worst happens - her mother is murdered. An extreme life support machine keeps her conscious just long enough to whisper to Nina that her father is alive, and that she must keep her sister away from Ed. Nina moves to the city to live with her elderly grandparents, and she starts to learn about the father she never knew, who she believed died on the day she was born. Nina tries to untangle the mystery of her father, while protecting her sister.

I dove into this book and barely came up for air, reading it on my lunch break, and for hours when I should have been sleeping. The moment I finished it, I downloaded its sequel, Truth, from the library's web site, and finished that just as quickly. I chose this book because I heard Julia Karr was another local writer I should check out, and I'm glad I did. It's very much a YA novel, so at times I felt a little old reading it. But I enjoyed it. With all the YA novels being made into films these days, they could do worse than to option this series.