The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma
The colors of this cover alone had me smitten before I read the summary. Then words like "ballerina" and "prison" hit my rods and cones and synapses were a-firin' and SHIT WAS ON!
But I will suggest you don't read this book while doing a rewatch of Bunheads. I was waiting for Boo to hand Sasha a bleeding bouquet of roses (although, let's be honest, Sasha probably deserved it). Throw in the fact that I was also working my way through season 3 of Orange is the New Black... reality got away from for a bit there.
Nova Ren Suma's voice is creepy. relatable and lyrical. Which, as it turns out, is a unique and AWESOME combination. While Violet and Orianna are opposite sides of the same coin and therefore present a fascinating relationship dynamic... Amber as the true narrator of V and Ori's tale is the true star. She is an intriguingly complex character that paints the gray cell block setting in vivid and dark colors (purples and reds, perhaps? ::knowing eyebrow raise::)
Synopsis:
" Ori's dead because of what happened out behind the theater, in the tunnel made out of trees. She's dead because she got sent to that place upstate, locked up with those monsters. And she got sent there because of me. "
On the outside, there's Violet, an eighteen-year-old dancer days away from the life of her dreams when something threatens to expose the shocking truth of her achievement.On the inside, within the walls of the Aurora Hills juvenile detention center, there's Amber, locked up for so long she can t imagine freedom.Tying their two worlds together is Orianna, who holds the key to unlocking all the girls darkest mysteries . . . What really happened on the night Orianna stepped between Violet and her tormentors? What really happened on two strange nights at Aurora Hills? Will Amber and Violet and Orianna ever get the justice they deserve in this life or in another one? In prose that sings from line to line, Nova Ren Suma tells a supernatural tale of guilt and of innocence, and of what happens when one is mistaken for the other.
A suspenseful tour de force, a ghost story of the best sort, the kind that creeps into your soul and haunts you. Libba Bray, author of "The Diviners "and "A Great and Terrible Beauty"