Not Even Bones Review

Not Even Bones Review

I just finished Not Even Bones by Rebecca Schaeffer, the first book in the Market of Monsters series. It actually has a Webtoon based off of it, which I recommend (it’s free!). I'd give it 3½ stars.

Not Even Bones follows Nita, who dissects bodies so her mom can sell them on the black market. Normal stuff. Her mom hunts down “unnaturals,” supernatural beings like vampires and unicorns. Nita’s pretty special herself -- she and her mom can alter their bodies, doing things like shutting off pain receptors or increasing levels of dopamine or healing faster. Nita and her mom live in Peru, one of the last countries where INHUP, the unnatural protection agency, has no power.

One day Nita’s mom brings home a live unnatural, something she’s never done before. Her mom plans to cut off the boy’s body parts one at a time so they’re fresh. Nita is horrified, especially after talking to the boy and learning his name, Fabricio. So she helps him escape to a neighboring country so he can be protected by INHUP. 

Nita’s mom is furious. Later that day, Nita is kidnapped. She wakes up in a glass cage in the Death Market, an entire market town deep in the Amazon dedicated to the sale of unnatural body parts. Nita realizes that this must be her mother’s revenge for freeing Fabricio. But she has more immediate problems, like the prison guard, a distractingly handsome zannie (an unnatural who feeds on pain) named Kovit. Will Nita be able to escape before she gets cut up and sold? 

I finished this book and didn’t really know what to think. I liked the premise? I accidentally spoiled the big plot twist for myself trying to see how many pages there were, so I’m not sure how I would’ve reacted to it, but I think it was pretty good. I thought the world building around unnaturals was very realistic. I had a fun time reading it, I guess. To anyone considering reading this book, it has human dissections, cannibalism, drug use, graphic violence and gore, death, and dismemberment. It is definitely horror. 

Nothing actively stuck out to me as bad. It didn’t have an ‘everything’s happy now!’ ending that completely disregards all the death and violence, which was nice. The author was really good about making sure we understood that Nita and Kovit’s actions were questionable at best.    

Overall, I’d say check it out if you’re not too sensitive to gore. It’s the first book in a trilogy and I have the second book on hold for whenever the library reopens.