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Review: The Bodies We Wear by Jeyn Roberts

I received this book for free from the mentioned source in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book nor the content of my review.



Review: The Bodies We Wear  by Jeyn RobertsThe Bodies We Wear by Jeyn Roberts
Series: The Bodies We Wear #1
Published by: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Random House Childrens Books on 9/23/2014
Genres: Dystopian, Science Fiction, Young Adult
Pages: 368
Format: eARC
Source: NetGalley

View on: Goodreads
Grab it: Amazon

Review Score:
About the Book:

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 Review Banner

 

 

The Bodies We Wear is the third novel by Jeyn Roberts, and is the beginning of a new series.  A tale of revenge, this novel was definitely good, and while I’m glad I read it, it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting.

 

The story takes place in what I think is a futuristic society?  There’s no sci fi robots or anything really giving the impression that it’s set in the future, but for some reason I just felt like it was in the not too terribly distant future.  A new drug has been created, called Heaven’s Dream, or Heam as it’s known on the streets.  The drug kills you, you supposedly see Heaven, and then the drug jump-starts your body.  Most of the time.

 

Faye was 11 when she and her best friend Christian met the wrong group in an alley on the way home.  The thugs forced the two children to take the drug to punish them for another’s crimes.  The only thing is, Faye didn’t see Heaven when she took the drug, she saw Hell.  And Christian didn’t come back at all.  Now Faye is 17 years old and she is determined to take the lives of the men who ruined her life and killed Christian.

 

There were things that I absolutely loved about this novel, the biggest thing probably being Faye.  In the novel, Heam leaves spider web scars across your chest and shoulders, making it easy to spot a Heam addict unless they keep themselves covered.  There’s also a huge stigma that comes with being a Heam addict, whether the drug was forced on you or not.  Because of all of this, Faye’s life has been anything but easy since those men forced the drug on her.  I found myself really wanting her to have her revenge.  I wanted her to destroy the men who destroyed her.  But Gazer, Faye’s guardian, keeps trying to show her that getting her revenge might seem good for now, but it won’t make her happy in the long run.

 

The story itself was really entertaining to me.  I liked the idea of this futuristic sort of drug that really devastated this society, and I liked that it really dealt with the stigmas that can be involved with people who become addicted to drugs.  Faye even has a hard time getting a high school to take her because she bears the scars of a Heam addict, even though she had the drug forced upon her.  Also the fact that there was something as normal as high school kind of surprised me for some reason.  I kept getting this idea of a dystopian, futuristic type of world, but kids still go to school, parents still go to work, so maybe it wasn’t as dystopian as I was making it in my head for some reason.

 

The things that I didn’t like about the novel were the sort of supernatural aspects that come later in the novel.  I can’t say anything more about them without spoiling a huge part of the book, but I just felt like it wasn’t necessary to the story, and I would have been happier if it would have taken another route.  The other issue I have with the book I also can’t get into too much detail about without completely ruining the ending of the book, but I kind of wish it had gone a different direction.

 

I’m going to give The Bodies We Wear 3 out of 5 controllers.  It’s definitely an interesting read, and I’d suggest it, but the second half of the book had a lot of things that I wish had gone different ways than what they did.

 

 

My Rating


rate - 3

Ariel sig