Prized

Prized
Caragh M. O'Brien
356 pages
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Source: library
★★★★☆

You can read the Goodreads summary here.

In this sequel to Birthmarked, we find Gaia pretty much where we left, her.  She's just escaped with her baby sister when she is found and picked up by a settlement.  But she soon finds that the settlement she's come across is even worse than the Enclave she left.

If you thought the Enclave was bad, whooooboy, wait until you read about the community of Sylum.  The women rule but the men are treated like second class citizens.  The ratio of girl to boy births is 1:9 and getting worse with each passing generation.  And it's considered attempted rape for a boy to kiss a girl.  As you can imagine, independent Gaia was not good with the rules of the community she found herself in and I loved how she took command of her situation.  Even when she was being held captive, she was still charge of the situation and how she handled herself throughout the book was pretty admirable.

And forget YA love triangles.  This book has a YA love... rhombus.  It was awesome.

Too often these days I read trilogies where the second book is simply a bridge between the first book and the third book; it doesn't contain much plot or forward movement.  But Prized was so much more than that!  It had it's own plot and purpose.  Only the last two chapters really set the storyline up for the third book, which I will definitely be picking up when it comes out.

Four stars!  It didn't completely hold my attention, but I was still drawn in by the plot.  If you haven't started this trilogy yet, it might be worth a look for you if you're big on dystopians.