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Reviewed by:
  • Another Little Piece by Kate Karyus Quinn
  • Kate Quealy-Gainer
Quinn, Kate Karyus . Another Little Piece. HarperTeen, 2013. [432p]. Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-06-213595-7 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-06-213594-0 $10.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 9-12.

A few weeks before her seventeenth birthday, Annaliese Gordon lied to her beloved and overprotective parents, went to a party and lost her virginity to the school stud, and promptly vanished—although not before making a single bloodied appearance at the outskirts of the party. A little under a year later, a girl whose DNA is a match for Annaliese shows up several states away and is brought home by her parents to recover from what people can only assume is severe trauma. This Annaliese (who begins to call herself Anna) remembers nothing, not the trauma or her life before, and she is, in fact, quite certain that she is not Annaliese, a suspicion that grows as her memories of past lives, a deadly bargain, and a bloody ritual begin to surface. The first-person narration here is ingeniously deployed, disorienting readers from the get-go as they, along with Anna, try to determine if there is something supernatural going on or if she's suffered a true psychological break. The tension doesn't lag, even when signs begin to point clearly towards the supernatural—with each memory Anna regains, the questions increase and the depth of both the evil web she find herself in and her own culpability in it is slowly revealed. Quinn manages an impressive task, keeping her heroine sympathetic despite the monstrous acts Anna has committed in the past; this is done largely through the relationship that develops between Anna and the mother of the former Annaliese, a portrayal that is stunning in its raw emotion as the two broken women try and fail to heal each other. The happy ending seems then a little out of place, but readers will nonetheless enjoy putting the pieces together of this taut, terrifying supernatural thriller.

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