Coco Ma
YA Post-Apocalyptic Dystopia
Fifteen years ago, The Vanishing thrust Manhattan into darkness, forever changing the City That Never Sleeps. Aboveground, resilient New Yorkers have adapted by clinging to the vestiges of their cosmopolitan lives. Below the streets–well, you never go underground unless you have a death wish.
Or unless you’re Rei Reynolds.
By day, Rei attends the an elite New York prep school, but by cover of night, she’s is a self-initiated warrior with a knack for hunting Deathlings, the deadly creatures that haunt Manhattan’s subway tunnels and blood-soaked streets at night. All Rei wants is to avenge her parents, who were slaughtered years ago by the nightmarish monsters.
The Tournament is the only path to the career Rei has always dreamed of–becoming a Maverick, the city’s elite Deathling-killing force. Winning should be a breeze, but the one potential problem is fellow competitor Kieran Cross, Rei’s infuriating ex with whom she shares a bitter history. But as the Tournament progresses–and the cutthroat betrayals mount–everything Rei believed about who she can and cannot trust is called into question. She soon becomes the target of everyone who wants to keep the city’s ruling class in power, as well as those who seek to bring it down.
In other words, Rei is positively and completely screwed.
Coco Ma’s exhilarating fantasy blends thrills and chills for an immersive read featuring the snarky, postapocalyptic heroine we all hope to be.
-Excerpt taken from Goodreads.
Check Goodreads to see the book’s ratings.
My Opinion
“Kill without remorse. Live without regret.”
(4.5 / 5) Loved this! For me it felt like a cross between Hunger Games, All These Monsters and The Q. If you haven’t read any of those, I highly recommend them also.
“You may wish to seek vengeance, but always remember that the greatest motivation is not to kill what you hate, but to protect what you love.”
I haven’t ever read anything from Coco Ma but I have to say that she has intrigued me. These are the types of books I love for teens and myself obviously). There are tough characters fighting for their beliefs and their families and while it’s full of entertainment, it also has a great message.
“…we can’t always be the person we want ourselves to be, and being brave enough to take our best crack at it nevertheless.”
Teens (of course it’s teens! In a real world it would be adults but still, it makes it exciting) are the ones who are hired to fight monsters that have taken over Manhattan. They train and go through a tournament to find the best to fight and kill these monsters. Manhattan has been cut off from the rest of the country so it’s up to the tough New Yorkers to find them and finish them off so the bridges can be built again.
“You took all of your broken pieces and made them your weapons.”
It’s the perfect dystopian world with intense leadership, problems within the leadership and those that are fighting against them. There is always a secret the government is keeping and it’s always a huge reveal when found. A lot of the pieces of the puzzle aren’t put together until the end but I loved the ride along the way. This was pure entertainment and I’ll be reading Coco Ma again!
General content summary: F words= 4, parents were previously “slaughtered” by a creature (details), explosions (panic, deaths), deathlings= creatures that hunt at night and kill people (some death details), fighting and killing of deathlings (multiple, details), m/m marriage, physical violence (punching, blood), alcohol (underage), almost getting hit by a car (injuries), sedatives unwillingly given (multiple), nonbinary character, gunshot death, car hits person (some details).
Thank you to Penguin Teen, Viking Books for Young Readers and NetGalley for the copy!
The book releases September 19, 2023.
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