Stung

Author: Bethany Wiggins
Goodreads Rating: 4.61
Pages: 304
Format: E-ARC from Netgalley

There is no cure for being stung.
Fiona doesn’t remember going to sleep. But when she opens her eyes, she discovers her entire world has been altered—her house is abandoned and broken, and the entire neighborhood is barren and dead. Even stranger is the tattoo on her right hand—a black oval with five marks on either side—that she doesn’t remember getting but somehow knows she must cover at any cost. She’s right.
Those bearing the tattoo have turned into mindless, violent beasts that roam the streets and sewers, preying upon the unbranded while a select few live protected inside a fortress-like wall, their lives devoted to rebuilding society and killing all who bear the mark.
Now Fiona has awakened branded, alone—and on the wrong side of the wall.

Yet another delightful book. It took some getting used to after I started reading it, but it was fairly short and very quick to read, and very easy to fall under the spell of. I found myself getting mad at people for interrupting me while I was at work and reading because I just had to find out what was going on and what exactly bees had to do with these beasts that were roaming to streets with tattoos on their hands. I also wanted to know why Fiona had no memory of the last few years, but all in good time my friends.

I wasn't sure what to make of Fiona because she has no idea what is going on after having awoken in her house not the way that she left it. Eventually we are clued in that her last memory was in her house when she was 13 years old, and now all she knows is that she looks more like her older sister than she does her last memory of herself. Apparently 4 years have past and she has no idea where those years went. I tried to decide how I thought Fiona should act, if she should continue to act like a 13 year old (because at times she did) or if she was supposed to act like the age that she physically was. I think the jury is still out on that one.

I have to say that as much as I didn't like the beginning because I was really confused and had no idea what was going on, I felt better connected to Fiona because she was feeling the same way I was only more terrified because there were "beasts" running around. I felt that the name "beasts" was an inappropriate term because I kept picturing the Wendigo from Charmed which was just a really hairy person, but apparently in this book they were normal people just absurdly strong and impervious to pain and they liked to rip people apart. Cool eh?

Once Fiona or Fo as everyone seems to call her for a reason I cannot deduce, goes to the camp, its easy to predict that someone there will be a nice guy and protect her. I adored Dreyden for being the one to come to her rescue, but I felt that all their actions following that were a huge pile of "How the hell did we get here??" moments. I liked that we got to know him slowly as he tried to ease Fiona into this world that she woke up in. While there was some info dumping through the use of these flashbacks, I found them somewhat effective because we were given a glimpse of what life was like before and what caused this catastrophe.

I enjoyed this book. It pulled a lot of different emotions into it including terror, and sadness, and adoration and so many others that its almost hard to describe.

The Courts Decision: