All characters are assumed to be white Tristan is dyslexic, and there are several queer characters.Īn unflinching portrayal of the devastating effects of domestic violence. Gray spares no detail in this intense tale. With everything she has been through, Zoey is the underdog readers will find themselves rooting for. Tristan and Zoey share a budding romance in which Zoey slowly but surely learns to love and be loved in a nondestructive, healthy way despite her fears and reservations. The story is narrated from Zoey’s and Tristan’s first-person perspectives, and Gray ( Run Away With Me, 2017, etc.) has masterfully captured the uncertainty and terror that come from domestic violence. Yet the fear of being hunted down by her father consumes Zoey. They take refuge in California, where Tristan and his sister welcome them into a world where things seem hopeful and more stable than anything they have ever known. After their lives go up in flames, literally, Zoey along with her mom and her younger siblings, Kate and Cole, flee Las Vegas with the help of her older brother, Will, and his best friend, Tristan. Learning that her father has been recently released from prison, Zoey suspects he had something to do with the blaze. It’ll take a sturdy reader not to keep flinching-or put this exercise in sensation down altogether.Īfter a horrific domestic violence incident, Zoey Ward and her family finally find their footing in Las Vegas only to have their lives overturned by a house fire.

Vega works in the occult element coyly, giving readers and Sofia only glimpses of what may or may not be supernatural evil-but there’s plenty of lovingly described, human-inflicted evil to keep strong-stomached readers occupied.

The book comes with a “for mature audiences only” label, and refreshingly, this is not a warning about sex but about protracted, unrelenting and graphically described violence. The bulk of the book takes place in a secret hideout in an abandoned development, and it is there that the girls viciously, bloodily confront Brooklyn, the proceedings causing Sofia to question all her moral certainties (and her immediate survival). What she sees at a party sets off a horrific series of events that ends with maimed and dead teenagers. Though she’s been raised an unbeliever, her beloved grandmother, who lives with Sofia and her mom, is a devout Catholic something in her responds when Riley decides to “save” her, baptizing her in the girls’ room. She is a little sorry that Riley and her posse seem to have it in for friendly Brooklyn, but she goes along with them. Military kid Sofia Flores is used to moving around and always being on the outside, so she’s happy to be embraced by the queen bees in her new high school in tiny Friend, Mississippi.

The merciless by danielle vega