Eat Your Heart Out

Published: June 11th, 2013

Another Little Piece

By: Kate Kayrus Quinn

HarperTeen

ISBN-13:  9780062135957

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.

Review

     Annaliese Rose Gordon has suddenly reappeared after being gone for a year, with everyone thinking she was dead.  The last time anyone saw her was at a party, screaming and covered in blood.  Now that she's back, Anna can't remember anything about her past or where she's been for the last year.  She begins to uncover the past with only a straight razor carved with the names of other girls, half-memories and a creepy boy following her around talking of someone called 'the Physician.'  But when she begins to truly investigate with the help of her outcast neighbor Dex, she discovers that some things are better left buried.  Anna just may have made a bargain with the devil and with a desperate, unholy hunger about to consume her she must decided whether to continue on the path to Hell or finally make the right decision.

      The book starts off with Anna in a mental ward, being assessed by Doctors after she has been missing for a year.  With a chunk of her brain missing and her memory gone with it, Anna is almost completely dissociated from reality.  She calls her parents "the Mom" and "the Dad" not really claiming them as her own.  It turns out this attitude is for good reason, as Anna is an interloper who got the real Annaliese to make a devil's bargain and give her body over for Anna's use.  Using the wishes of other girls and their desperation, Anna has been body jumping since her own life was abruptly shattered.  The whole concept of the 'deal' was completely and utterly creepy.  As someone who doesn't generally read horror, the especially graphic passage of text describing Annaliese cutting out Anna's heart and eating it could have been enough to make me stop reading - if I wasn't too damned curious for my own good!  One thing that almost did make me stop reading was the stalkerish behavior of Annaliese's previous 'boyfriend' Logan, but with the what could be called a curse working on his sensibilities, I had to cut him some slack.  But he was pretty disturbing.  

     The characters in this one are pretty abstract, although we get to know both Annaliese and the creature/lost girl Anna through flashbacks/memories as she starts to regain knowledge of her many lives and deaths.  Honestly the whole subplot with Frankie and the Physician just made things all that much more creepy.  Especially since Frankie's sick obsession is what propels his continued interest in Anna, even after she is in the bodies of other girls.  Quinn definitely captures the feeling of being an outcast in a world where you decidedly don't belong.  I thought the revelation of Dex's secret and why he's so obsessed with terrible things to be interesting, if a bit cliched.  The ending of this one was okay, but I think I would have been happier and it would have made a lot more sense if no second chances were afforded.  It just didn't sit right with me.  The connection between Anna, Gwen (Annaliese's best friend) and Annaliese was interesting and well drawn.  It was a believable way for Anna to ingratiate herself into the life of her next victim.  I give the author major props for keeping me so invested, even when my stomach was in turmoil! :)  I definitely see the parallels between this and the type of grotesque horror that Stephen King specializes in.  Even with paranormal undertones, the graphically horrific situations were enough to turn my stomach.  This may not have been the right book for me personally, but it was a really interesting debut and I'd definitely recommend it to fans of horror, who have strong stomachs for gore.

VERDICT:  3/5  Stars

*I received an Advanced Reading E-book Copy from the publisher, via Edelweiss.  No money or favors were exchanged for this review.  This book was published on June 11th, 2013.*