Title: Another Little Piece
Author: Kate Karyus Quinn
Release Date: June 11, 2013
Publisher: HarperTeen
Source: Edelweiss DRC
Genre(s): YA Fiction, YA Paranormal Fiction, YA Horror, Paranormal, Horror
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
Review Spoilers: Mild
GoodReads | Amazon
Honestly, I was a little disappointed in this one.
GoodReads bills it as: “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.” I mean, when you compare something to Stephen King I have some expectations of the story. And while this one started out okay I was quite disappointed in the second half of the book and the ultimately unsatisfying explanation.
So, actually.
It really is just like a Stephen King novel.
The basic premise of Another Little Piece has some really great potential. The main character, Annaliese, has returned home after going missing a year ago. When people saw her last she was walking out of the woods covered in blood after losing her virginity to a boy. Not that the boy did anything to her. He had long since left her behind. But she came out of the woods back to this part screaming and covered in blood.
Then she disappeared.
When she is found, she’s walking around in the middle of nowhere in the woods. She eventually winds up back with her family and she tried to get back into the swing of things. It’s hard. she doesn’t feel like the girl who disappeared and she doesn’t really remember anything about Annaliese’s life. This in itself was a pretty bad ass start to a book. And the dark turn it takes when she’s watching a high school football game and just suddenly wants to eat one of the players? Yeah. I’m set up for something intense. I’m set up for something that’s going to go balls to the wall and not hold back anything.
Except it does. It holds back pretty much everything. Annaliese has this weird sort of flashes of other girls, there’s razor with names of other girls on it… It’s all kinds of weird spooky stuff that’s meant to make you wonder what’s going to happen next. Except stuff like this just keeps happening. You get random flashes of this. Anna feels like this. Meanwhile she’s being stalked by the boy who took her virginity and left her in the woods the night she disappeared and she’s got this friendship going on with this weird boy next door named Dex. Who can apparently see the way people die. Which includes some really disturbing stuff man.
The book as a whole is actually kind of cool. Quinn throws some unique characters at us and I loved Dex. His style of clairvoyance is actually really unique and I like the angle the author took with him. I liked how Anna failed to reinsert herself back into Annaliese’s life and how she realizes that there’s something else going on with her.
I just sort of wish that the explanation we got was anything other than the one we actually got. I had a really hard time staying interested with how long it took to get any answers and even then the answers didn’t really, I don’t know, draw me in. The creepy kid at school, too, was a bit bothersome. I just wanted the whole damn thing to get resolved and to make sense and I just felt a bit left down. I mean, it’s explained and I guess it makes sense. It probably makes more sense if you don’t skim through bits and pieces of the book like I did.
Don’t get me wrong, now. The book has some great moments. Like I said, Anna and Dex’s relationship is great. I love it. And I loved the girl who saw ghosts and even the backwoods, hick family that found Anna. At the same time, though, the actually backstory behind everything? Weakest part of the book.
And I can tell it’s being staged for a sequel from what Anna said about football player she slept with before disappearing at the end…
What probably would have been better is if the book had been less paranormal and more real life-esque. Or, conversely, if they had just come up with a different paranormal explanation. With all the lore out there in the genre they could have picked up something else or come up with something on their own that was just… not what Quinn gave us. I guess I just didn’t see the appeal.
Realistically, the book just probably wasn’t for me.
So would you think it was worth a look? Ehhhh. I guess. If you like this sort of thing. But I do like Stephen King and horror and the paranormal and I struggled to finish this one. I think that girls who like paranormal fiction would really get into this one and appreciate Anna as a character. I’m not sure, though, if they’d have the patience to get through it. Read it for the potential it had and see if you like it. If anything, read it for the characters.
English