Grounded, imaginative YA fantasy.

Another Little Piece is a refreshingly original YA story that not only explores a completely different supernatural angle but is also, notably, not a trilogy, and therefore has an obviously different plot arc and pacing from so many of its contemporaries. If you’re looking for moody, supernatural YA fantasy that has nothing to do with a teen girl being seduced by some sort of undead man-teen, this book is for you.

From Goodreads, because I have like 9 thousand reviews to catch up on and also people are paid to write book bios so why should I have to: “On a cool autumn night, Annaliese Rose Gordon stumbled out of the woods and into a high school party. She was screaming. Drenched in blood. Then she vanished.

A year later, Annaliese is found wandering down a road hundreds of miles away. She doesn’t know who she is. She doesn’t know how she got there. She only knows one thing: She is not the real Annaliese Rose Gordon.

Now Annaliese is haunted by strange visions and broken memories. Memories of a reckless, desperate wish . . . a bloody razor . . . and the faces of other girls who disappeared. Piece by piece, Annaliese’s fractured memories come together to reveal a violent, endless cycle that she will never escape—unless she can unlock the twisted secrets of her past. ”

I always groan when I see what I’m about to write in reviews, because I know that what follows is going to be tremendously vague and unhelpful, but here we are: I don’t really want to give much away about the book. It really is best experienced when you don’t really know what is going on. Even as you start to understand what happened to Annaliese, it’s not as if figuring out the secret too early ruins the rest of the story. The tone and anxiousness over what comes next are enough to keep you hooked.

This book definitely fell into the category of “read it all at once” (or at least, wanted to.) I loved the pragmatic voice of the narrator, even as she was dictating fantastical events and working through her own confusion and amnesia. I loved that the love story was a footnote to the larger arc of the narrator putting the pieces of her life together and choosing her own future. I also really liked that the parents in this book weren’t shitty YA parents who are alternatively condescending, dismissive, absent, or downright abusive to their children. Don’t get me wrong — a lot of young people relate to struggles with and against their parents and I get why it’s such popular concept, but it was nice to see, for once, parents that are largely loving and supportive.

Anyway, I’m ending this uninspired review to re-iterate that if you’re a fan of YA and, particularly, supernatural YA, you should really pick this up.