I'm not usually a huge dystopia/sci-fi type book, and I'll be honest that I wasn't fully aware that Girls with Sharp Sticks by Suzanne Young was dystopian or about "cyborgs" as I recently realized my public library categorized it as.... I liked it though! So much that I just put the second book on hold at my library so I can find out what happens to these... cyborgs?
I recently started a bookstagram account on insta, I definitely have no clue what I am doing, but you might start to see me getting a tad bit more creative with my pictures on my blog as I experiment with how to do flatlays and other bookstagram/instagram things I'm learning are supposedly very important lol! My only fear is that now that I am becoming slightly obsessed with instagram I might start to spend more time on social media than I do reading! That would definitely throw a wrench in my plans to continue reading way too many books at one time and writing hundreds of NetGalley reviews! We'll see what happens now that it is Summer Break!!
Back to the book review...
So, Girls with Sharp Sticks is about a school called Innovations Academy where there are about 12 girls who are learning very 1950s era skills like how to apply appropriate makeup and please your husband. The main character, Mena (short for Philomena) starts to notice that something is weird about this place. I'm not sure what set her off, was it the creepy men constantly touching teenage girls? Was it the fact that they are force fed random pills each day and if they don't obey they are sent for creepy therapies with their data analyst? Or you know, could it be the fact that they never let them leave? I guess all of these things would seem rather natural if you were heavily brainwashed (or a cyborg?).
Young includes the perfect amount of YA intensity such as a budding but completely off limits relationship with a boy, a teenage girl's desire for power and agency and female solidarity to keep readers craving more. As I said, I'm not usually one for dystopia, but I do actually find that books that are set in fairly familiar settings in the not so distant future seem to be acceptable for my tastes lol. There was enough about this book that I could understand and latch onto that I often forgot about the setting. There was just the right amount of suspense that I wasn't too scared though, I will admit there was a few eye things and that is my biggest phobia so I did have to skim a few pages to get past those parts! Other than that it was a good level of suspense, not too scary for this girl!
So add this dystopian YA to your TBR list and stay tuned for my review of the second book, Girls with Razor Hearts coming soon! Also, check out my instagram and let me know what you think! https://www.instagram.com/teach.read.inspire/
Happy summer vacation Teacher Friends! You've earned a nice long break!
July 18th, 2022 - Update:
Girls with Razor Hearts
As promised above, I decided to read and review the second book in this series, Girls with Razor Hearts. I picked it up from the library last week and finished it earlier today. It was definitely a quick read and quite different from the first book in the series. The first difference is that I loved this one more for the quotes and themes than the plot.
** Spoilers of Sharp Sticks may occur when I'm discussing Razor Hearts so if you haven't read the first book and want to, pause here, grab the book and come back and find me when you're ready! **
So, Girls with Razor Hearts picks up where the first book left off: the girls + Jackson and his BFF Quentin have narrowly escaped Innovations and have ended up at Imogen's house, a former student of the academy. Leandra, the weird stepford wife of the headmaster, comes and sets the girls on a mission by giving them some new aliases (but not great ones...) and some tickets to .... Connecticut. The girls rent some apartment and send Sydney and Mena to a new school where everyone is either a misogynist or ignores the fact that misogyny is rampant. Meanwhile the creepy "investor" from Innovations happens to be there, plus the lady who wrote the poems, and Lennon Rose (she was one of the girls but everyone thought she died). Jackson however is not there, because Mena abandoned him and his broken leg (and heart) before they left. Annalise meets a random hacker who she tries to convince the other girls to welcome with open arms, and luckily they are at least slightly hesitant, because before this they had no clue what a hacker (or technology, really) even was so that could have been crazy dangerous lol. Anyway, things get a little off topic because now that Sydney and Mena are at the school their focus is suddenly on the crazy teenage boys who sexually harass their classmates in front of the teachers... so now we aren't so worried about the robot girls back at the academy because the real girls seem to also be having some trouble... Anyway, that's good enough of a synopsis for now.
As I said before, the thing that I actually really liked more about this book was the themes and the quotes so I was able to get past the strange plot lines and change of focus... for the most part anyway.
What's really neat about Girls with Razor Hearts is that because the girls recently "woke up", meaning they learned that they are not real girls and have been created to help further a misogynistic agenda where men can buy control, readers are actually given a really neat opportunity to see the world through a new perspective. I love this quote above. If you didn't know that gender, race, class and culture existed, there would be no reason for these classifications.These ideas are constructs that have been used throughout history in an attempt to create power for a few and control the masses. By creating a situation where the girls are neither humans nor something entirely different, Young is able to provide thoughtful commentary on the world through an outsider's perspective.
This quote is so interesting. As a Canadian, I have the opportunity to watch with horror as my neighbours to the south make terrible choices. I think about the ignorant judges and government figures who create laws and rulings that unfairly disadvantage huge portions of the population who are already incredibly vulnerable. When you make decisions that impact large groups of people, you have a responsibility to be knowledgeable of the potential damages your decision can create, yet so often elected officials are ignorant to any perspectives other than their own. But how did they get this power? It was citizens who elected them, or chose them to be the decision makers, after all. Were they deceitful in their campaigns, or were the citizens ignorant when casting their vote. Perhaps a bit of both? Maybe citizens are ignorant and the ignorant leaders use that ignorance to their advantage. In this case, ignorance is a strategy.
In another way of looking at things, ignorance can be a lack of responsibility. Continuing to use outdated terminology, not researching the information you share on social media, focusing on reality tv rather than current affairs are just a few examples of using ignorance as an excuse. Ignorance can be a choice, probably the easier or lazy choice, but if we do not acknowledge the fact that it is a choice, we shrug off the responsibility of becoming informed.
All that being said, the first idea, ignorance as a strategy, or withholding/altering information, is truly scary. On page 256, Mena asks Lyle, a boy at the new school, whether or not he and his mother have any books about a protest mentioned in her history class. Lyle explains that it is unlikely because people who craved power paid to remove access to information about controversial issues. Knowledge is power, so as a result, by preventing people from learning about a historic event is an act of withholding or removing power from someone. This is where that dystopian element of the story really comes into play because the events being discussed aren't necessarily accurate but could absolutely happen in the very near future, if something similar hasn't already happened, that is.
Lyle goes on (page 257) to state: "They didn't want to be reminded of how horrible things were. And now they're losing that it even happened." This is again the other side of ignorance. By choosing to ignore or eliminate history, society has chosen to ignore responsibility and the age-old quote: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905.
Much like the first quote, our use of language can alter our perspective and create divisions unnecessarily. How we speak and what we say has an impact on those around us, as well as our own experiences and understandings. Additionally, the way that we verbally respond to someone can validate their opinion and encourage further sharing, or can make the person feel alienated and afraid to speak up in the future.
On Page 268 Mena and Sydney are in the principal's office, a punishment Mena earned when she hit Garrett in the head with her lunch tray following a very public and traumatizing display of sexual harassment towards another female student. Sydney did nothing but yet was also in trouble, which the girls believe is connected to several racist and discriminatory experiences Sydney has had at the school. This reminds me of my post on microaggressions and systemic racism in boarding schools as described in Admissions by Kendra James. I had actually been planning to make a connection between another recent blog post, which I will still do, but it's so interesting how writing about your feelings and understandings leads to so much deeper thought and connections! Now that I think back with this new reflection, Sydney definitely experienced several microaggressions, from boys blocking her from entering a room to not being called on in class and now this situation where she got in trouble for being near someone who was violent when she did nothing wrong - definitely screams discrimination.
Where I was originally going with this discussion was related to the quote on page 268: "Why is everyone so willing to lie all the time? And it's those lies that are so insidious. The way society pretends these terrible things aren't happening - their racism, their sexism. The way they pretend it's just us overreacting." Two young women are struggling with witnessing sexual harassment and in reporting it to the principal they face punishment and their stories aren't believed. The lies they are told and the responses they received from the adults who are supposed to protect them are damaging.
This problem in responses to reports of sexual harassment is a huge theme in the book Exposed by Alicia Curry. I just finished that book a little over a week ago and while it is a true story and the events happened to an adult, there are definitely similarities or parallels in this story. If you're interested in a more in depth examination of how reports of sexual harassment are handled definitely read Exposed and you can find out more about it in my blog post.
I've been procrastinating writing a final review on this book (can you tell?). There were so many interesting storylines, conflicts, ideas, quotes and more that kept me interested and made me reflect. For that, I can't give this book any less than a 4 stars, especially since it is a YA! This is not to say that YAs can't have interesting plots and handle important issues, they absolutely can and often do, however, I think that many YAs focus more on keeping the interest of young adult readers and don't dig as deep as an adult book might. In fact, Girls with Sharp Sticks definitely did not go into these issues in nearly as much depth as the second book did.
But I can't help but feel this book was kind of all over the place. I feel like the issues from the first book were not fully explored and then this book took on a whole new set of issues and only half resolved them as well. In a way the two stories were connected, the characters were the same, both were dystopian, but this book felt wayyyyy different than the first book. Clearly I'm torn.
Compared to the first book, there is very limited YA relationship excitement, but there is a bit. The intensity in this book is more related to the sexual harassment stuff. There is also much less suspense and instead it is more of a slowly pieced together mystery. This one actually felt less dystopian than the first book, except of course, that almost everyone was a robot. Did that make it bad? No, not really, but I'm not sure what YA readers would think about it. Maybe they'll just have to read it themselves and decide!
Oh my gosh, there's a third one?! Will I read it? I'm not sure. Will there be seven new storylines? Probably. Another new boarding school? Most likely. Some great themes and quotes? I would hope so. Oh what have I gotten myself into....?
Comments