Book Review: The Bodies We Wear by Jeyn Roberts

The Bodies We Wear
The Bodies We Wear #1
Author: Jeyn Roberts
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Science Fiction
Released: September 23 2014
Review Source: Knopf Books for Young Readers

A streetwise girl trains to take on a gang of drug dealers and avenge her best friend’s death in this thriller for fans of Scott Westerfeld and Robin Wasserman.

People say when you take Heam, your body momentarily dies and you catch a glimpse of heaven. Faye was only eleven when dealers forced Heam on her and her best friend, Christian. But Faye didn’t glimpse heaven—she saw hell. And Christian died.

Now Faye spends her days hiding her secret from the kids at school, and her nights training to take revenge on the men who destroyed her life and murdered her best friend. But life never goes the way we think it will. When a mysterious young man named Chael appears, Faye's plan suddenly gets a lot more complicated. Chael seems to know everything about her, including her past. But too many secrets start tearing her world apart: trouble at school, with the police, and with the people she thought might be her friends. Even Gazer, her guardian, fears she's become too obsessed with vengeance. Love and death. Will Faye overcome her desires, or will her quest for revenge consume her?

The Bodies We Wear follows Faye, a teenage girl who had her childhood ripped apart by the Heam. With the revenge being the only thing on her mind, she never believed that Chael could be who he says he is. Focusing hard on getting Rufus back for all he's done becomes hard when she's trying to uncover the mystery of Chael as well as trying to be a normal teenager.

I honestly wasn't expecting much from this book. I was suspecting that it would keep me entertained, but I never expected what I got. Not only was the story entertaining and I wanted to keep reading, but there was a moral. And sure Faye is a teenage girl just thinking about graduating high school, and I am a girl(reluctantly I'd call myself an adult) who has graduated from college and is focusing on real world issues-but the moral hit home for me. It made me stop and go "Whoa...wait...this is so true!" and it made me rethink some things. As well--the story was entertaining and I was sad when it ended, but I understood that there really isn't anywhere for the story to go. But after seeing on goodreads that it's book #1 that leads me to believe there will be a book #2 and that excites me to no end! I cannot wait if there is to be a book #2. If not I will just have to reread The Bodies We Wear so that I can continue to fall in love with Faye and Chael and their worlds all over again.   

Book Review: Dark Inside by Jeyn Roberts

Dark Inside
Dark Inside #1
Author: Jeyn Roberts
Reading Level: YA
Genre: Science Fiction/Dystopian
Released: November 1st 2011
Review Source: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
Available: Amazon

Summary: (from goodreads) Since mankind began, civilizations have always fallen: the Romans, the Greeks, the Aztecs…Now it’s our turn. Huge earthquakes rock the world. Cities are destroyed. But something even more awful is happening. An ancient evil has been unleashed, turning everyday people into hunters, killers, crazies.

Mason's mother is dying after a terrible car accident. As he endures a last vigil at her hospital bed, his school is bombed and razed to the ground, and everyone he knows is killed. Aries survives an earthquake aftershock on a bus, and thinks the worst is over when a mysterious stranger pulls her out of the wreckage, but she’s about to discover a world changed forever. Clementine, the only survivor of an emergency town hall meeting that descends into murderous chaos, is on the run from savage strangers who used to be her friends and neighbors. And Michael witnesses a brutal road rage incident that is made much worse by the arrival of the police--who gun down the guilty party and then turn on the by standing crowd.

Where do you go for justice when even the lawmakers have turned bad? These four teens are on the same road in a world gone mad. Struggling to survive, clinging on to love and meaning wherever it can be found, this is a journey into the heart of darkness – but also a journey to find each other and a place of safety.

Dark Inside is an apocalyptic novel, where four teens try to survive in a world gone mad. An evilness has crept into the minds of many, causing horrible acts of violence. While fighting through constant madness, the teens struggle to find hope and light in a terrible darkness. To simply put it, this book was amazing. To the intriguing characters, shocking action scenes, and the mental horror, I found nothing wrong with this book. Jeyn Roberts did a fantastic job of conveying her traumatizing story to the reader. Throughout the novel she switches between four main characters following their individual roles in the story.

At first I was a bit cautious, but as I read on, the book continued to flow with great ease. Each character was compelling and grew throughout the entire novel. Compelling, in that the choices that the characters made were extremely realistic, and truly provided evidence of why they reacted to the conflict in the ways that they did. The author pushed each one to their emotional and mental limit, showing what could happen to real people in these circumstances. To those of you who don’t know this author or book, then you better get acquainted fast, because I predict some amazing things are still yet to come from Jeyn Roberts, with book 2, Rage Within.