The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow is one I received in my Quarterly Box this quarter. The only reason I started it right away? The library had the audiobook, which meant I could switch back and forth at a whim. Call me strange, but I prefer when I have a physical and/or digital copy as well as an audiobook when I read, that way I don’t have to stop reading. Ever.

What it’s about (from Goodreads):

Greta is a duchess and crown princess—and a hostage to peace. This is how the game is played: if you want to rule, you must give one of your children as a hostage. Go to war and your hostage dies.

Greta will be free if she can survive until her eighteenth birthday. Until then she lives in the Precepture school with the daughters and sons of the world’s leaders. Like them, she is taught to obey the machines that control their lives. Like them, she is prepared to die with dignity, if she must. But everything changes when a new hostage arrives. Elián is a boy who refuses to play by the rules, a boy who defies everything Greta has ever been taught. And he opens Greta’s eyes to the brutality of the system they live under—and to her own power.

As Greta and Elián watch their nations tip closer to war, Greta becomes a target in a new kind of game. A game that will end up killing them both—unless she can find a way to break all the rules.

My Sticky Note Review