In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.Īutumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart their mothers are still best friends. Characters are diverse in physical appearance.įor dystopian fantasy fans seeking something fresh and savage. Readers will feel the rawness of Koral’s suffering, beg for a reprieve for her, and question how she can possibly still be alive after being ridiculed, chased, and attacked at every turn. Berwah’s worldbuilding is intense, depicting a cruel society in which the power-hungry elite are just as monstrous as the terrifying oceanic beasts.

The Landers are determined to destroy her, but the Freedom’s Ark, a fractious and riotous band of rebels, may prove to be her downfall.

While other competitors have spent their lives training, Koral must rely on pure grit and her knowledge of maristags to stand a chance of surviving and saving her family. Driven by desperation and rage, Koral risks it all to sneak into the Glory Race. Forced to serve Landers but shunned by Renters as sellouts, her family’s crippling debt worsens when they fail to capture a maristag and can’t afford the medicine for Koral’s ailing younger sister. As a Hunter, a member of a Renter subcaste, she captures and trains maristags-deadly, temperamental sea monsters-for Landers participating in the Glory Race, a lethal chariot competition in which only one Champion is crowned. In Sollonia, a world where the line between upper-caste Landers and lower-caste Renters is strictly defined, Koral’s family is condemned to fall in between.

A young woman defies the caste system by entering a competition reserved for the elite.

Monsters born and made book