Not Even Bones

Market of Monsters, Book 1

By: Rebecca Schaeffer

Narrated by: Almarie Guerra

"Twisty, grisly, genre-bending and immersive, Not Even Bones will grab you by the throat and drag you along as it gleefully tramples all of your expectations." (Sara Holland, New York Times best-selling author of Everless)

Dexter meets This Savage Song in this dark fantasy about a girl who sells magical body parts on the black market - until she's betrayed.

Nita doesn't murder supernatural beings and sell their body parts on the internet - her mother does that. Nita just dissects the bodies after they've been "acquired". Until her mom brings home a live specimen and Nita decides she wants out; dissecting a scared teenage boy is a step too far. But when she decides to save her mother's victim, she ends up sold in his place - because Nita herself isn't exactly "human". She has the ability to alter her biology, a talent that is priceless on the black market. Now on the other side of the bars, if she wants to escape, Nita must ask herself if she's willing to become the worst kind of monster.

©2018 Rebecca Schaeffer (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Produced by special arrangement with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

Critic reviews

"Almarie Guerra does an excellent job capturing the dark nature of the book and gives Nita a voice that shows her lack of social skills and her developing conscience.… Mature teens who enjoy morally gray characters and intense suspense will be drawn to the story."
—School Library Journal

"[A] morally complex, edgy debut...Schaeffer’s antiheroes show empathy and insight as they struggle to define the line between human and monster. It’s a testament to Schaeffer’s excellent writing that these themes never overtake the characters’ stories."- —Booklist, starred review

"The thrilling plot proves thought-provoking." —Publishers Weekly

Great idea! Maybe not executed the best.

I love the idea of a black market for supernatural parts. The South American culture is an appropriate backdrop for this.

I think the moral struggle of this book is a bit wonky. A family killing for profit would have been better balanced with a threat over them rather than mom just being money hungry. I also think that Kovit should have been able to reduce another’s pain through the eating process to leave room for him to have more appeal as a love interest. (I think the author was trying to go dark while still being YA friendly. Big mistake—just jump the line and join the adult section, honey! Lol)

And last but not least, there is no such thing as pain circuits, just nerves. I understand this is fantasy, but it should have been described as filtering out the pain (mentally). Shutting down nerves means feeling nothing at all. This would have worked just fine in the scenes where she was trying to get Kovit’s attention. She would instead bite her finger or cut herself without blocking out the pain.

Deliciously Brutal

This is not a story about hero's and princesses. Even though unicorns make an app they don't behave like they do in you're typical fantasy. Everything is make darker in the real world especially when "monsters" or the unnaturals are real. This story offers a darker take and breaks most tropes that are overused at this point. Highly recommended.

ONE OF THE GREATEST BOOKS EVER

this book immediately pulls you in and you’re practically living it along with the protagonist Nita, you feel for her and Rebecca Schaeffer does a STUNNING job with world building and creating believable and multidimensional characters. I couldn’t put this book down, and bought the second before I even officially finished the first. I don’t know how I’m gonna make it until September for book three!

good book

This is a really good book, finished it in 2 days. starting on the next one now!

It was great!

A real page turner! I do hope some certain characters will make a reappearance in the next book.