The Walls Around This

Nova Ren Suma is quickly emerging as my favorite YA author. Her latest, The Walls Around Us, is perfect from start to finish. Told by two main characters--Violet, a ballerina with some major issues, and Amber, a juvenile prisoner at Aurora Hills Correctional--this book weirds you out and pulls you in from the first page when all the cell doors open and the teen prisoners "go wild." Then, time skips, "visitors" appear, and the eerie sense of Something Just Ain't Right, is fully upon you. First we're in Amber's world. Amber, imprisoned for murder, knows the rules of Aurora Hills, knows how to survive her time, but  also knows that something bizarre is happening, something she can't quite remember, and it all has to do with the Bloody Ballerina, the newest arrival to the correctional facility. She's been convicted of murdering two ballet dancers. But Violet, her former best friend, a rising star on her way to Juilliard, obviously knows more about those murders than she's telling. Switching to Violet's world, we see a girl obsessed with perfection, wracked with guilt, but also frighteningly cold and self-serving. She decides one day to visit Aurora Hills. .  . and then things get truly twisty.

Nova Ren Suma is an amazing, adept writer with crazy, awesome plots and characters that get under your skin, in a good way. Come visit Aurora Hills and see for yourself. I dare you.