(Also, it's an ARC, so keep your eyes peeled on September 2nd!)
Violet Lasting is about to become no more.
She's one of two hundred girls capable of being a surrogate for the upper class women in her society, and as such, she no longer gets to have a name. She's Lot 197, one of the most desirable bodies in the bunch, because she's exceptionally talented at using the Auguries, the mutations that allow her to be a surrogate.
At first, she thinks she'll go to the Electress, the leader of the Lone City, but then the Duchess of the Lake makes a surprise bid and wins her just as the time on her auction runs out. This has consequences both good and bad for Violet.
The good: she lives in an opulent palace where all of her wants and needs are taken care of at the snap of a finger. She also meets Ash there, a boy who's in a predicament similar to hers, and they end up falling hard for each other.
The bad: If she puts a toe out of line, the Duchess punishes her tenfold for it. And she and Ash are technically not supposed to have any contact, as they are both property of the Duchess to be used for different tasks.
Violet soon learns of a way out of the Jewel, the city center where she now lives. It'll be dangerous for her to get out and get to safety, but it's just as dangerous for her to stay - implantation has a lot of negative side effects on the surrogates, and the Duchess wants her to manipulate the Auguries in ways that might actually kill her. A choice has to be made - will she protect herself and get out of the Jewel, or will she protect her friends and stay with Ash until the end? The last few pages are full of surprises.
I plowed my way through this book in a day. It's really easy to read, and the concept's pretty interesting. The blurb calls it a cross between The Selection and The Handmaid's Tale, and I'd say that's pretty accurate, though the Auguries have to be taken into account, too. Getting blindsided by magic nearly turned me off to this book.
I really, really loved the worldbuilding in this novel. It's not a dystopian possible future thing like The Hunger Games or The Handmaid's Tale. It's set in its own world: the Lone City, shaped like a concentric circle with five sections. There's the Marsh, the Farm, the Smoke, the Bank, and the Jewel, all pretty self-explanatory. Surrogates can only come from the Marsh, and only the people in the Jewel need them to reproduce - everyone else is still capable of doing it naturally. There's a blood test to determine which girls are surrogates, and they get sent to special training facilities once they're old enough so they can learn how to use their Auguries. It all makes sense, and I didn't notice any gaping plot holes at any point in the novel.
Surprisingly, I also didn't mind the love interest. Ash is a nice guy, and he doesn't have any of those "brooding abuser" characteristics that tend to happen in YA romances. He and Violet aren't one of my favorite couples of all time, but I liked their story well enough. It added another layer of complication to an already dense web of choices, probably even the most important complication - if Violet wasn't in love, she would have less compelling reasons to stay in the Jewel.
I can tell The Jewel is going to have a sequel - the ending was definitely not final. Hopefully it comes out pretty quickly, because I'm definitely hooked enough to want to see what happens next, even if I'm not totally in love. Four stars.
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