Book Review: Stung by Bethany Wiggins

Image (c) Walker Childrens

Stung (Stung #1) by Bethany Wiggins
Release Date: April 2nd, 2013
Book Format: Library Book
Rating: Three stars

There is no cure for being stung.

Fiona doesn’t remember going to sleep. But when she awakens, her world no longer exists. Her house is abandoned and broken. Her neighborhood is barren and dead. And there is a tattoo on her right hand. A tattoo Fiona doesn’t remember getting…but somehow she must conceal at any cost. Because humanity has been divided.

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 fortresslike wall, their lives devoted to rebuilding society and killing all who bear the mark.

And Fiona has awoken branded, on the wrong side of the wall, and…normal.

From the author of Shifting comes this remarkable reimagining of Sleeping Beauty, where the sting of a bee, rather than the prick of a needle, can destroy the world.

You wake up from your bed, just like any other day. You still wake up from your same bed in your same room. But, when you look around, things are clearly different from what you remembered them to be. For instance, now it looked like a tornado took over your room. Not just your room, though- but your whole house. None of your family is here. Neither is your brother. All of it is strange- until something attacks you. When you toss them back, you realize it's the one person you never had expected to see attack you: Your brother. And he's more than determined to get you. He dons a tattoo on his wrist- the same tattoo you wear on your arm that you don't quite recall getting.

You don't remember a thing at all, in fact, other than you fell asleep right in that spot in your room. Nothing makes sense anymore. All you knows is that no one must know that you have that tattoo. Somehow, you know it's something bad.

This is what Fiona wakes up to, with the realization that life had changed before she even had a chance to experience it. A good chunk of her life has disappeared and now she has to learn how to survive in a world that changed without her- and the new rules that she has to learn to abide to.

But slowly, the past is unraveled as she runs around to keep herself safe: she finds people she thought she lost a long time ago and the cause that started the monsters that now infest her home.

This was a very fast paced book and rarely does anything remain still for too long. Fiona doesn't stay in one place for even a day before she finds herself on the run. Nothing is safe, she learns, and she'll never be safe as long as the tattoo on her hand remains there to show how much of a danger she can be one day.

I won't say much about the end, but the end left me with a bit of a disappointed taste in my mouth. With everything that happened with Fiona, I was expecting something more. Overall, though, it is a good read and it's good for those who love dystopian books. I'm not planning on letting the end deter me from reading the sequel- especially since I'm curious about what's going to happen now.

Originally posted and shared on January 25th, 2014