XVI by Julia Karr

Goodreads summary:
Some girls can't wait to be sixteen, to be legal. Nina is not one of them. Even though she has no choice in the matter, she knows that so long as her life continues as normal everything will be okay.

Then, with one brutal strike, Nina's normal is shattered; and she discovers that nothing that she believed about her life is true. But there's one boy who can help--and he just may hold the key to her past.

But with the line between attraction and danger as thin as a whisper, one thing is for sure..For Nina, turning sixteen promises to be anything but sweet.

My thoughts:
This time last year I was reading my first dystopian YA novel. Something about Christmas break makes me want to read about the end of civilation as we know it. :) Just kidding. I liked this book. It didn't blow my hair back but there were several parts of this book that appealed to my political science heart. I definitely could feel how the author felt about the sexualization of young girls, health insurance companies, and over bearing governments as a whole. The interesting thing about this book that other dystopian books lacked what how real the main character is. Nina is the average girl who is put into some serious and shitty circumstances. She handles what she can and fails when she can't handle them. I am looking forward to the follow up to this book which is due out in a few weeks.

I would also say that I liked that Nina was not only loyal to her family like all or most dystopian books, but Nina also valued her friends as family. I liked that Nina had strong female friendships with two very distinctly different girls. I can relate to that. Even now my two closest female friends couldn't be more different.


I would recommend this book to people who dig the dystopian trend in YA books.