Girls With Sharp Sticks: Suzanne Young

We meet again!

This book has been on my Amazon list for a very, very long time, and I finally found it at my library. I’m trying really hard not to panic right now, but I have a lot of anxiety, because it’s only the first book and I don’t know if my library has the other two. I never commit to a beginning without the others unless they haven’t been written yet and I’m trying really hard to reign it all in right now and just focus on the story here. Panic attack aside, here we go :)

Brief Synopsis:

Philomena (Mena) and the rest of the girls in her class at the Innovations Academy are learning how to be perfect. Their school is an old industrial building and they’re in the mountains of Colorado, isolated from the rest of world as they learn how to be presented to society as their best selves. Complacent, beautiful and not worried about questioning anything for themselves.

The classes teach them things like how they must look presentable at all hours, the way they’re supposed to wear their makeup, and, yes, how they’re probably “asking for it” if their skirt is any shorter than what the school has set as regulation. Mena and her classmates are just grateful that they’ve been given the opportunity to learn how to be the best women that society has to offer and aren’t ready to question the things that are put in front of them.

Until one morning on a field trip when Mena notices that Valentine, another classmate, is acting really strange. When the bus needs to stop on the way back to the academy, Mena gets off and meets a boy. Named Jackson. The Guardian of the academy doesn’t approve of this and very physically takes Mena back to the bus. Valentine also has a weird reaction to this encounter, but it’s all sorted out back at the academy. Or so they think.

This one morning starts to unravel everything that Mena thought that she knew about her family, her life at the academy, the training they’re receiving to be put back into society and

what the actual line is between what is right and what is wrong. When one of the girls has what appears to be a bit of a breakdown and then just… disappears, Mena finds herself more scared than she remembers ever being. Her and her friends, especially Sydney, start to question what they know. Jackson, though he only met Mena once and very briefly, makes his way to the academy to check on Mena and promises that he’ll try and find information on their friend that disappeared.

When Mena searches her friend’s room, she discovers a book of poetry that further pushes into her mind that all is not what it seems. She stops taking the “vitamins” that are given to the girls nightly and her mind starts to clear, showing her that her reality is actually a nightmare. Though terrified, she encourages the other girls to do the same. The girls realize that Valentine wasn’t going crazy, she was the first one of them that realized what a danger the academy really was to them.

That’s when the girls finally decide that they’re going to wake up and fight back. They’re going to stop being pushed around by these disgusting men that think that they’re made just to please them. But are they made for the sole purpose of doing what these men at the academy want them to do? Their reality is far more terrifying than they could have ever imagined and once they discover the truth, there is absolutely no going back, no cowering down and no way that the girls are going to let the academy and the men that run it continue to hurt girls like them.

With the help of Jackson, Jackson’s friend Quentin, and an unlikely ally that they didn’t see coming, the girls begin the fight of their lives. They know that their hands aren’t going to be able to stay blood-free in a fight of good and evil like this, but they also know that they don’t want to become cold-blooded and murderous like the men that have controlled them for much longer than they could ever have guessed.

In a balancing act to save their souls, if they even have any, the girls of Innovations Academy show the men that made them that they’re so much more than vapid, mindless arm trophies. They truly are Girls With Sharp Sticks.

My rating:

7/10. The story is definitely a good one and ensured that I will, without a doubt, finish this series to find out what happens to Mena, Sydney and the other girls. There were a lot of ways that it wasn’t as original as I hoped it to be, but still a great story.

Favorite Quote(s):

“I want honesty, pure honesty, and it feels like the most intimate decision I’ve ever made.”

“We have no interest in their mediocrity.”

A book I read with similar vibes:

Has anyone else read the Darkest Powers series by Kelley Armstrong? Being stuck with people they thought they could trust that are controlling them gave me strong vibes of that story. Though I haven’t read the book (it was a book first, right?), it also really reminded me of the movie The Stepford Wives.

Check out my Goodreads (Traci Bishop) to see what I’m currently reading and to see a good chunk of the books I have already read. My Instagram can be found on the home page and I will share whenever a new post is up as well!

Until next time <3