Review: Stray by Monica Hesse

 

Stray is a book by Monica Hesse, first published in 2013 by Hot Key Books.

Path is a virtual reality experiment. But not just any. Hundreds of children from deprived backgrounds come to Path to have a better 'life'. They spend their first 18 years as someone else. Julian. 

But not Lona. Lona Sixteen Always is no longer going to survive this experiment. One day during Path a familiar face comes onto her screen, promising her more, better. 

Lona is ready to stray from her Path, and forge her own. But will life give Lona everything Fenn promised it to be?

♥

We were screaming. The Path broke and we were screaming. Except that wasn't exactly true, was it? Something about that statement was false. I wasn't screaming. Everyone was screaming but me. I wasn't screaming because even though I was scared, I liked it.

I.

Not we.

In Path, Julian ate a banana, brushed his teeth with a depleted, gummy tube of Crest. Lona barely noticed any of it. She was too thrown by her own thoughts to register anything happening in Path.

Until something happened in Path that didn't belong in Path at all.

For a split moment, so quickly she would have missed it if she had blinked, a face filled Lona's screen. He looked like he was trying to say something, but there was no sound and Lona couldn't read lips. 

His face was thinner. His hair was longer than it had been when she saw him last, or at least longer than she remembered it being, but still the same curls and the same dark color. Still the same green eyes. Still the same serious look in them.

Fenn.

♥

This was an extraordinary book that is indescribable by words. One I literally could NOT stop reading. 

I don't know the word that would best describe what I have just read. I don't think a word fitting enough even exists yet. Some I can think of are amazing, action-packed, interesting, lovable, confusing, on-edge, etc. But these just don't seem enough. There is only one word that seem to describe this book perfectly.

Impossible. 

Don't ask me why, but it just seems to fit. It is the missing puzzle piece. 

This book has been sat on my shelf for months, and I have, I admit, been avoiding it. I picked it up not knowing what I would think: taking a risk. But now, I don't know how I could have kept it there for so long and not read it.

Not reading this book is impossible.

That is where the word fits.

-Beth

Happy Reading!♥