Review: Girls with Razor Hearts

It’s time to fight back in this second novel in a thrilling, subversive near future series from New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Young about a girls-only private high school that is far more than it appears to be.

Make me a girl with a razor heart…

It’s been weeks since Mena and the other girls of Innovations Academy escaped their elite boarding school. Although traumatized by the violence and experimentations that occurred there, Mena quickly discovers that the outside world can be just as unwelcoming and cruel. With no one else to turn to, the girls only have each other—and the revenge-fueled desire to shut down the corporation that imprisoned them.

The girls enroll in Stoneridge Prep, a private school with suspect connections to Innovations, to identify the son of an investor and take down the corporation from the inside. But with pressure from Leandra, who revealed herself to be a double-agent, and Winston Weeks, an academy investor gone rogue, Mena wonders if she and her friends are simply trading one form of control for another. Not to mention the woman who is quite literally invading Mena’s thoughts—a woman with extreme ideas that both frighten and intrigue Mena.

And as the girls fight for freedom from their past—and freedom for the girls still at Innovations—they must also face new questions about their existence…and what it means to be girls with razor hearts. ~ Goodreads

Source: ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Review:  This is an incredibly difficult book to review without spoilers – so maybe consider the whole thing a spoiler if you don’t want to know anything about book #1 but there won’t be spoilers for this book.

Just to repeat SPOILERS FOR BOOK #1 ahead!!

Girls With Razor Hearts picks right up where Girls with Sharp Sticks left off. The girls, finding out they were created in a lab to be the perfect women and subservient to men, *woke up* and made their (violent) escape and are now free looking for a place to live safely, make a plan to go back and get the rest of the girls and take down the main investors of the Innovations Academy.

They end up enrolled in Stoneridge Prep academy, a private school, that brings them closer to the answers they need to truly be free but also shows them that escaping the academy doesn’t mean the end of their problems with men or misogyny.

The girls have never really encountered men outside of the academy – other than the main character’s love interest Jackson and his best friend. Their wary, with good reason, but also expect better of he *real* world. So they’re shocked when they encounter bro & rape culture and those in power, both men and women, who look the other way.

The generic high school setting isn’t nearly as interesting or compelling as when the girls were discovering who they were or fighting for their lives in book 1 – but this could have been kind of interesting. Imagine being free for the first time in your life and discovering that the world is just an endless fight with corrupt and abusive men. It wasn’t just an academy thing. Where do you go from there? Is anywhere a safe place? What constitutes a normal life for them?

Unfortunately, I felt like Young tried to cram in every single issue that women encounter ever. Alongside all the issues carried over from the first book that still needed addressing, It was a lot. Almost too much and very heavy handed. Men are bad. Message received like a hammer to the head.

My other issue is the how the girls/women in this book are portrayed. The girls that escaped have an unbreakable bond from what they’ve been through but their current state of mind an motivations vary greatly. Mena, the MC, just wants to save the other girls and end the academy. She believes there are good and bad people – including men. Some of the other girls and adult women want revenge.

And I get that – but it’s taking a dark turn. That could be cool to explore! Is revenge justification to becoming what you fear and loath? Are the women being just as controlling and manipulative of the girls as the men from the academy were? Mena kind of questions or disagrees with things but moves on. Young only half-heartedly explores this and it's a shame.

I’m not sure if this is middle book syndrome – lots of set up in book #2 – then race to a hastily wrapped up threads and moral quandaries in the last book or she has lost control of this story.

There are so many characters (I lost track since they come and go), so many points to be made, so many plot twists and so many remaining issues that a lot was left up in the air or hastily explored.

Suzanne Young knows how to write biting sci-fi social commentary and can write plot twists like nobodies' business, but in this case, it seems more like cramming in a lot of issues that, yes, are shocking, relevant, and fast paced but left me feeling like not a lot actually happened and how the heck is she going to resolve it all in just one more book?

In short – I felt like this book needed a scalpel and not a sledgehammer to make it truly bone-chilling and subversive.

For a different POV – read Greg’s review! He thought it was a worthy sequel that didn’t suffer from middle book syndrome.