Release Day Review: Another Little Piece

Author: Kate Karyus Quinn
Release date: June 11th 2013
Publisher: HarperTeen
Hardcover, 422 pages
Source: Publisher for review
Buy: The Book Depository

The spine-tingling horror of Stephen King meets an eerie mystery worthy of Sara Shepard's Pretty Little Liars series in Kate Karyus Quinn's haunting debut.

On a cool autumn night, Annaliese Rose Gordon stumbled out of the woods and into a high school party. She was screaming. Drenched in blood. Then she vanished.

A year later, Annaliese is found wandering down a road hundreds of miles away. She doesn't know who she is. She doesn't know how she got there. She only knows one thing: She is not the real Annaliese Rose Gordon.

Now Annaliese is haunted by strange visions and broken memories. Memories of a reckless, desperate wish . . . a bloody razor . . . and the faces of other girls who disappeared. Piece by piece, Annaliese's fractured memories come together to reveal a violent, endless cycle that she will never escape—unless she can unlock the twisted secrets of her past.

Before all else, I feel I need to point out that Another Little Piece is a weird and terrifying read, and surely not for everyone. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever read before, but if I had to find a better known author to compare it to, I’d say it’s closest to Brenna Yovanoff’s works. The writing is not as gorgeous, but it is perhaps even more disturbing than any of Brenna’s books.

Anneliese has been missing for a whole year, and now that she’s back, she remembers nothing of her previous life, or her time away. She just knows she doesn’t belong – her life doesn’t seem like her own, her parents are complete strangers, and her skin doesn’t quite fit. She’s uncomfortable around people whose presence should be comforting, and she dislikes things the old Anneliese liked very much.

All the relationships in this book were done extraordinarily well, be it Anna’s relationship with Logan, the boy she was in love with prior to her disappearance; her relationship with her best friend Gwen or her growing friendship and romance with her neighbor Dex. More than anything else, however, the intricacy of her relationship with the mom and the dad, as she calls them, was simply astounding.

Oh, but the romance was special, too! A bit instalove-y, a bit strange, a bit awkward and even a bit disturbing – it matched the overall tone of the book perfectly. An ordinary boy could never have stood next to Anna, but the boy she ended up choosing had more than enough baggage of his own, and I loved seeing the two of them together. So what if it wasn’t the most realistic of romances? I don’t think Quinn was aiming for realistic, and I don’t think it’s what this book needed. In this context, awkward and instalove-y was nothing short of perfect.

I thought the poetry between chapters, written by Anneliese before her disappearance, was a really nice touch. At first I was a bit ambivalent because I liked the idea, but disliked the poems themselves, but I later realized that teen girl poetry was supposed to be bad and that it had probably been done on purpose, and that realization allowed me to appreciate it more. The poems offer brief glimpses into the mind of the old Anneliese, before she was irrevocably changed.

Another Little Piece brings one surprise right after another. It seems that Kate Karyus Quinn belongs to that very small group of authors who refuse to pull any punches. In fact, after reading this debut, I dare say she’s already a force to be reckoned with.