Kitty Doe has just committed a crime. The fruits of her labour – an orange – are concealed in her palm. Now all she needs is for someone to notice her misdeed so that the Shields will correct the injustice with a bullet to her head. Dead at seventeen, it would be a relief. Anything could be better than the judgement that had been passed down on her earlier; the mark freshly tattooed on the back of her neck. Kitty is a lowly III, an Extra in a society that despises waste. One more step up would have saved her; as an IV, she could have had a somewhat normal life – and her failure is her own fault.

Now she has limited choices, a boyfriend with so much potential that she doesn’t want to tie down and a responsibility to make sure she’s never a burden to anyone. There is only one real option she can see: the clubs, where Extras work and live, selling their services to anyone with the money to pay for them. Before she can get there, however, she’s taken off of the streets, bundled into a limo and told a terrifying secret: the president’s niece, apple of society’s eye is dead and Kitty is to be given a once in a lifetime opportunity. She will be Masked, given plastic surgery to look like the dead girl, so that no one will ever learn the truth. She will be a VII. She will be famous, adored. She will also have to stop the secret rebellion that Lila began. Secrets, threats, conspiracies and heartache abound, Kitty’s fate rests on one decision: can she trade everything she is for the opportunity to become something better?

Pawn is an engrossing, aptly named novel that draws you in with each move made within Kitty’s life. Following her transformation to beloved Lila, the conflict of merging her identity with that of a strangers and traversing the tricky road that comes with not losing herself entirely by trying to balance the two, this novel is a journey that sweeps you up within its relentless, overwhelming story and leaves you aching for more.