Melissa Stacy's Reviews > The Female of the Species

Dark, brutal, thrilling, beautiful. This book is SPECTACULAR!! One of the best YA novels I've ever read, from the gut-punching swift prose to the subject matter to the unforgettable characters.

This story is nothing like most YA on the market today. These characters felt honest, true to life, crackling with flaws and ugliness and yearnings, selfish and compassionate in equal measure. The world of these high schoolers felt like *my* high school world, dark and dirty, heartbreaking and mundane. This book felt so true to life to me, and I loved every second.

Even with the realism and the darkness everywhere on the page, there is a lot of moral messaging going on in "The Female of the Species," and the ending articulates a strong moral comeuppance, as one would expect with YA. But the ending is also perfect, and the final chapters strike all the right notes.

By the time I reached this sentence (page 334), I had tears in my eyes: "And while she came to me out of habit, I know there's more comfort for her in those wounds than I can ever give."

I refuse to spoil the plot by revealing what specific wounds were being discussed here, but I *can* say that this chapter ending was so powerful, I had to put the book down for an hour before I could read the finale. And I'm so glad I did wait, to give myself the emotional fortitude to read slowly and carefully, because the final chapter of this novel was GORGEOUS.

If you crave YA that features young women who are shy and chaste, physically beautiful and adorably unsure of themselves, who fall in love with experienced rich boys who quote poetry and save their fairy tale-esque lady loves from all manner of harm, and everyone generally waits to have sex until after marriage vows are recited or formal proclamations of True Love have been made -- you should probably avoid this novel.

If you crave a well-crafted book that hums along like a powerful piece of machinery, a story that grinds up fairy tale tropes like wood thrown into a chipper, and delivers a story that is exciting, gut-wrenching, and brutally stunning -- then "The Female of the Species" is one for your list. Highly recommended. I absolutely loved this book.