Review: Another Little Piece by Kate Karyus Quinn

Another Little Piece
Kate Karyus Quinn
Series: None
Release Date: June 11th, 2013
Publisher: HarperTeen
Number of Pages: 432
Rating: 4.5 stars
Word Rating: WUT

The spine-tingling horror of Stephen King meets an eerie mystery worthy of Sara Shepard's Pretty Little Liars series in Kate Karyus Quinn's haunting debut.
On a cool autumn night, Annaliese Rose Gordon stumbled out of the woods and into a high school party. She was screaming. Drenched in blood. Then she vanished.

A year later, Annaliese is found wandering down a road hundreds of miles away. She doesn't know who she is. She doesn't know how she got there. She only knows one thing: She is not the real Annaliese Rose Gordon.

Now Annaliese is haunted by strange visions and broken memories. Memories of a reckless, desperate wish . . . a bloody razor . . . and the faces of other girls who disappeared. Piece by piece, Annaliese's fractured memories come together to reveal a violent, endless cycle that she will never escape—unless she can unlock the twisted secrets of her past.

Unquestionably one of the strangest, most stunning, and original novels I have ever read in my entire life, Another Little Piece seems like it was practically written by Kate Karyus Quinn with me in mind. What other readers have said about Another Little Piece is all true--reading this novel is an undeniably confusing, mind-boggling, and downright ambiguous experience. Yet, while those very attributes caused Another Little Piece to be a disappointing read for some readers, the ambiguity of the entire novel, and the brilliant atmosphere deftly crafted by Quinn among the confusion, is in essence what made me love this novel so much. Love Another Little Piece or not, there is no doubting the fact that, upon turning the last page, it is a novel that will linger in your mind and likely haunt you, and ultimately, that's all I can ever ask for in a novel.


Kate Karyus Quinn doesn't shy away from anything that may turn readers off in Another Little Piece and I absolutely love that. Throughout Another Little Piece, there are many topics many authors, I feel, would be afraid to cover in a young adult novel, and the fact that Kate Karyus Quinn shows little fear in covering these topics, no matter how heavy they may be, makes this that more of a memorable and outstanding read for me. If you're not one to cringe upon reading teenagers having sex (and what some are willing to give up for it), and gore that was sufficient and detailed enough to make even my stomach churn, Another Little Piece should in no way be a book to avoid.

However, one of the most prominent reasons Another Little Piece will not be a novel I will soon forget is that, with each speck of absolute horror in Another Little Piece, there is a thin layer of unyielding beauty to almost counteract the horror. Amongst everything that is going awry in the novel, everything that Annaliese and her family are going through, and all of the blood and gore, there is an incontestable undertone of beauty established by Quinn's gorgeous prose, the messages she conveys with the horror, and the character development of Annaliese and her experiences with building her past relationships before she had disappeared, all within a strict time limit.

Another Little Piece is a novel one must go in blind for, so that they may unravel each and every one of the beautiful, horrifying, and stunning secrets this book holds on their own. Although I found some portions of the novel to be somewhat convoluted and convenient, I still feel that Another Little Piece is an absolutely genius, at times harrowing, and at other times completely magnificent and irrevocably daring debut novel that, although it may not work for some, worked for me and then some.