Spare & Found Parts                                                                                            by Sarah Maria Griffin 

What did I love about Spare & Found Parts? Let me count the ways...

Nell 
Nell is an incredible protagonist. She is beautiful, she is strong and in the face of fear and ignorance she shines so brightly. From the first page her emotions became my emotions. She grabbed me by the hand and didn't just pull me into her story but made my heart beat in time with hers. I saw Black Water City through her eyes and it was honest and terrifying. She made me care. 

Nell may seem lost, she is an outsider, she is in her mother's shadow, terrified of her father and grandmother's reactions to her choices, eclipsed by her vivacious best friend Ruby, tentative in rebuffing Oliver's advances but... BUT she is in truth an incredibly strong young woman. Despite the world she lives in, despite the expectations of the people around her, despite the constant onslaught of assumption and demands from Oliver, she rises above it all and shows herself and everyone around her that she is Nell, and being her amazing, unique self is all that she needs to be.

The writing
This story is so beautifully written. It's lyrical. The words dance across the page and into your heart. It's honest. Nell isn't perfect and sometimes reacted in ways that made me flinch, but that's the truth of humanity. We aren't perfect. We make mistakes. We hurt and lash out. We simply are. None of the ugliness is hidden, but is instead a piece of the puzzle, a fragment of what makes us who we are. The writing is enchanting and undeniably brilliant.

The setting
Nell's world is a post apocalyptic one. The city she lives in, Black Water City, has been devastated by an epidemic. Survivors are all missing parts. Her father creates biomechanical limbs that everyone uses. The stark, brutal picture painted of a society living in fear of the past, where everyone has to prove their worth, where suspicion and foreboding are rife is harrowing and yet the perfect backdrop for this story.

Character development
Nell took me through every range of emotions as she went from lost to soaring.
Oliver, oh Oliver, despite my loathing for his obsession with Nell, he remained a constant throughout. Even when he was terrified by Nell's choices, he remained on her side, on the city's side, on the side of truth... and maybe, slightly redeemed himself in the end??? 
Ruby, the confident, vivacious best friend who struggled to see Nell's true self, but undoubtedly loved her throughout. 
Her grandmother, lost in the past, in tradition, in the done thing, but who is formidable and true. 
The parents, Julian and Cora, obsessed, lost in their own glory... 
Io, a mechanical man, a computer brought to life, with emotions, the capacity to think for himself and the ability to make the reader love him. 
All the characters have their part to play, their piece of the puzzle that fits into Nell's life and their performances are perfect. 

Spare & Found Parts is an unusual story, but one that I fell in love with straight away.  A wonderful, terrifying, exciting, captivating book whose main character will stay with me forever. My words cannot possible do this story justice, please read it for yourself

Thank you to Titan Books for sending me this glorious book.