“I like it better when people remember who I am. There is no question that the main (and most of the secondary) characters have done terrible things, unapologetically, and Schaeffer has Kovit explicitly make this point: Schaeffer does not pull her punches in this book. Even a zannie has his limits, though, and Nita and the zannie, Kovit, team up to escape from the market. Believing her mother has sold her, Nita decides she must rely on her own resourcefulness to escape, something she becomes even more certain of when she realizes her kidnapper employs a zannie, an unnatural who feeds off the pain of others and is willing to torture them to get his meal. Shortly after, Nita, who has an unnatural ability to heal herself, is kidnapped for sale on the black market herself and imprisoned in an isolated market on the Amazon in the midst of the jungle. Nita loves dissection, so she tries not to think about who the dead bodies might have been when they were alive, but one day her mother brings home a living unnatural whose parts will sell better if they’re fresh, and Nita can’t deal with cutting pieces of a living person, so she sets him free. Nita’s mother hunts and kills unnaturals, and brings them to Nita for dissection and packaging.

While there is an organization, INHUP, tasked with protecting harmless unnaturals, it isn’t effective at policing the black market in unnaturals’ body parts. Not Even Bones is a YA novel set in Peru that takes place in a world teeming with “unnatural creatures.” Some of these, like vampires, are dangerous. I have addressed content issues within this review, but please see the content warning underneath, as it includes items suggested by the author. If you are planning to start this book, make sure you have plenty of time to finish it, because if you put it down, unless you have a very strong stomach, you may find it difficult to pick it up again. Available: Hardcover, paperback, and Kindle edition

Not even bones author