Aster. Violet. Tansy. Mallow. Clementine.
THE GOOD LUCK GIRLS are back and they mean business. . .
Aster is on a mission for the Lady Ghosts, helping an escaped Good Luck Girl. Although grateful to be contributing to the cause, Aster chafes at the way the Lady Ghosts work, taking as few risks as possible. So Aster is delighted when Clem tells her that there has been support from dustbloods around the country for the Welcome House arson, orchestrated by Aster.
Hearing that her action spurred these other small rebellions, Aster's resolution is crystallized. It's time for them to take this fight to the next level. They need to get rid of the welcome houses once and for all.
About the Author :
Charlotte Davis is a recent graduate of The New School's Writing for Children MFA program and is currently working as an editorial assistant at Bloomsbury USA Children's Books. She grew up in Kansas City, which was once the Wild West but today is mostly just fro-yo shops. She now lives in a little apartment in Brooklyn.
Charlotte says: 'I didn't want to tell a story about racism, necessarily - there's plenty of that on the news - but a story about a black girl and her sister finding freedom? Young women of all types getting into good trouble? Underdogs coming together to stand up against the rich and powerful? That sounded like exactly what the doctor ordered.'
Review :
Populated by a unique and diverse collection of characters that you will immediately fall in love with, this is a novel that will make you think, make you feel, and make you cry out, 'glory to the reckoning'.
The worldbuilding--slang, settings, gory dangers, and all--is rich and complex in this novel featuring a racially diverse cast. A smart, thrilling duology closer.
Davis has a knack for effortlessly tying in character development to the fast-moving plot. Readers will enjoy meeting and continuing to get to know the diverse cast[.] This book is hard to put down and readers will be inspired by its ending...Perfect for fans of Snowpiercer and Firefly.
Thanks to #Pridebooktours for making this book available to me.
Check out my review of the first book- I laid down the basic magic and power imbalance in Arketta.
Trigger Warning
I will start this book with a long list of Trigger warnings because this duology has so much that it would be wrong for me to recommend it without a proper list
1. Murder
2. Rape
3. Arson
4. Slavery
5. Child Abuse and Statutory rape
6. Human Trafficking
7. Kidnapping
8. Gore [Hanging, Skin burning e.t.c.]
9. Blood purity
10. PTSD
11. Torture
There are probably a couple more but these are the ones that I could think off when I was reading the book.
Now that is out of the way, let me tell you why this should be you next read.
The girls found the lady ghost (happens to be an underground operation that helps good luck girls cross the border into Ferron for a better life. Aster joins the Lady Ghost while the rest of her friends and sister moved on. Except Violet who was left behind when they were last captured by McClennon. At the start of this book, we find out that McClennon lied that the girls were killed when he captured them and that seemed to have calmed his people down while he saved face. He soon announced that he was going to open more Welcome houses and that girls would have their first night at the age of 13! Yes I said Thirteen. That man needed to be hanging by his balls (I don't give sh*t). Anyways, Aster finds out that Violet was still alive and she scales up floors to go find her.
This is when we realised that Violet also had a plan and it involved the young McClennon son, Derrick. Derrick was giving us typical white saviour vibes in the the first half of this book. I mean, he wanted to help out the Good Luck Girls but he was not ready to accept and acknowledge the privileged life he had lived at the expense of the girls. I loved how the author was able to touch on that without making it mean out of place in the story.
I do not want to spoil it but a lot of stuff happened in this book you really need to read it. I was turning pages so fast with this one. Now for one of my favourite things about this book, the love quadrilateral relationship between Aster, Eli, Violet and Derrick! Gosh, I loved the way trauma and sexuality was handled in this book. It definitely brought the topic to the fore front.
Do same sex relationship stem from trauma experienced from the opposite sex? - While this might be a flaming question in a lot of circles, the way it was addressed in this book gave me a different perspective. Aster like Eli a lot and you could tell from the first book. But her relationship with him was uncomfortable for her because of PTSD from her time at the Welcome House (which is understandable). One would suggest that with a bit therapy she would be able to manage her PTSD, but when you read the relationship with Derrick who she had no feelings for whatsoever, you could tell that the discomfort was when she was with Eli and not just around men in general (not to say that she was not hypervigilant around men). - At this point in my reasoning, I started to think 'Maybe she is fluid or she is Bi or Pan' my thoughts went wide and honestly (because I am selfish) I wanted her to have both Eli and Violet.
But when she was with Violet who she had once hated, she could relax. She could be herself, she could share her problems and her disappoints. With Violet a lot of things became very easy. Touching was easy, she was not hypervigilant, she was comfort. But she did not know that she was into Violet until it Raven pointed it to her. The panic she felt was the confirmation that she need. She got defensive and lashed out at Raven but once she took time to think about it. It was no longer about her trauma and her past at the Welcome House but about her future and who she felt herself around.
This book is just genius.
There are other topics that this book address, things like 'Wealthy and Religion, Privilege, Fear, Love, Relationships, Acceptance. Honestly, I could go on and one with this book but I will stop here to avoid more spoilers
My favourite quote from this book "Our suffering became their currency. They get rich off it. And they say it's all justified because we're criminals"
This just spoke to me so deeply. I felt it in my bones.
While this book was a good conclusion to the story, I am itching for more!
This is an incredible duology that packs a punch, with a dark and desperate side to the usual heroics of YA dystopia.
The Sisters of Reckoning is the sequel to THE GOOD LUCK GIRLS, an LGBT+ dystopia about a group of girls who escaped the 'welcome house' that they'd been sold to as children - a brothel that brands the girls as children with a mark that cannot be hidden. In the first book, they are forced to flee after Clementine accidentally murders the man who visits in her first night as a sundown girl. The Sisters of Reckoning continues on from the end of The Good Luck Girls, where Clementine and the rest of the group have found freedom in neighbouring Ferron, while Aster has remained behind to help more girls escape Arketta one at a time.
I really liked the way that this book built on the first one. In The Good Luck Girls we see a small group in desperate straits, fighting any way that they can for their personal freedom, whereas in The Sisters of Reckoning, they're taking on systemic issues in Arketta on a huge scale. This isn't your standard YA overthrow-the-system story. Charlotte Nicole Davis allows her characters to be dark and traumatised and lets them wreak the revenge they deserve. They make choices that are hard, that are awful in some cases, but that they have to make for any change to take place. That doesn't mean these girls aren't fiercely moralistic, they are doing the right thing at every opportunity, but the right thing isn't always the easy thing or the good thing.
One of my favourite facets to this book was Aster's struggle with her PTSD and sexuality. She's still suffering PTSD from her time in the welcome house, and on top of that she's trying to come to terms with her attraction to men and women and how she feels about it. I really loved the way that Charlotte Nicole Davis handled this, and how Aster had to process her attraction alongside her trauma as well as separating it - Aster definitely isn't the only woman who fears that her same-sex attraction could be caused by her trauma, and this book handles it sensitively.
I really enjoyed the way that this book ended. Without getting into spoiler territory, we got to see the interpersonal conflict which was far more important for our characters than the large scale 'rebellion' type scenes I'm used to from YA, and it left me feeling satisfied with this duology as a whole. While I wouldn't mind reading more from this world, I also can't wait to see what Charlotte Nicole Davis comes out with next.
