The Wicked We Have Done

by Sarah Harian

With elements of horror, thriller and romance THE WICKED WE HAVE DONE is perfect for readers who enjoyed Suzanne Collins and are looking for the next big thing...

Once a sinner, always a sinner...

Twenty-two-year-old Evalyn Ibarra had taken the normality of her life for granted, until the moment everything changed. Now, convicted of a horrifying crime, she will be one of the first to experience a new kind of punishment.

In the darkness of the Compass Room - an experimental prison - the morality of convicts will be tested, and they will be punished according to their performance. In order to stay alive, Evalyn must relive the events of the fateful day that has brought her here.

Consumed by her own struggle, she never expects to make friends amongst her fellow inmates, let alone fall in love. But in this new and terrifying world, such allegiances are dangerous - because no one will escape unharmed.

• ISBN10: 1472218108
• ISBN13: 9781472218100
• Publish Date: 18 March 2014
• Publish Status: Withdrawn
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Headline Publishing Group
• Imprint: Headline Book Publishing
• Edition: Digital original
• Format: eBook (EPUB)
• Pages: 272
• Language: English

Reviews

[Linda]

*I received a free ARC of The Wicked We Have Done from Headline via Netgalley in exchange of an honest review*

The Wicked We Have Done is a chilling story, taking humanity to the very limit of morality and ethics.

This and all my other reviews are originally posted on my blog (un)Conventional Bookviews

[celinenyx]

Scientists have developed a program that can determine whether a person is mortally corrupt. Inside the Compass Room, severe criminals are tested whether they are evil or not. If the Compass Room deems them corrupt, they will die. If you survive for a month, you're free.

Evalyn has been charged with terrorism for her involvement in a high school shooting. She is ready to be found guilty and to be killed. She is put into the Compass Room, which is reminiscent of the arena in The Hunger Games, with a serial rapist, a girl that put a house on fire which burned an entire family to death, a boy that murdered his father, and several other adolescents that risk death penalty for their alleged crimes.

I really like the concept of The Wicked We Have Done. It makes so much more sense to put people in an arena to test their moral resolve than it is to put children in one to fight to the death for some kind of twisted pleasure of a Capitol. The concept is highly realistic as well - wouldn't we jump on an opportunity to determine with science to detect evil? To test it in a highly controlled environment?

The arena is brutal. I won't go into much of the plot other than the premise, since information is only revealed slowly in the story. One aspect I'd like to highlight is that The Wicked We Have Done partly reads like a horror novel. People that are seemingly dead suddenly make appearances that wouldn't look weird in any horror flick. It is pretty scary, especially in the beginning, when you have no idea what the hell is going on.

The Wicked We Have Done is the first official non-romance new adult book I've read, and I wish there were more new adult books like this. I'm not interested in super spicy sex scenes and 18+ bad boys. I enjoy the slightly harsher young adult story, where it's okay to swear (and they swear a lot) and romantic relationships aren't crazily platonic (some YA couples are together for years, sleep in the same bed, and never do any boob-touching or anything - yeah right). There is a romance, two actually, which I found acceptable under the circumstances. There is some sex, but they mostly fade to black. The one thing that Ms Harian deserves a brownie for is that the girl is older than the guy. And there is a gay couple. Yay for diversity!

As I've pointed out before, the story of The Wicked We Have Done is pretty harsh and brutal, with characters dying a horrific on-screen death a few chapters in. What would have elevated this book from great to fantastic is more brutality. Towards the end Ms Harian decides to go with an ending a bit too convenient and saccharine for my taste. I wish she would have had the balls to make the ending a big whomper of cruelty, which would have fit with the overall tone of the book a lot better. I guess a lot of readers will be glad with how it ended, but I was left wanting she had taken it that one little step further.

A mash-up of science-fiction, dystopia, and horror, The Wicked We Have Done will appeal to the now more grown-up fans of the early young adult dystopia genre.

[kimbacaffeinate]

3.5
Caffeinated aspects:
• What if murder were seen as black or white? Harian explores this concept with her Compass Room and the prison test subjects.
• Each has been convicted of murder and has chosen to enter the Compass room, a simulation that determines your moral code. It uses some geeky technology and screams twisted Hunger Games. If they survive, they are set free.
• The test subjects are an interesting group. Each has committed murder. Each is guilty, but are all crimes involving death the same? For example, if a woman killed a man who was trying to rape and kill her should she be punished to death? In Harian’s future world that is exactly how this society treats crime. The Compass Room determines if you are good or evil.
• The suspense was delightful. We slowly learn why they are here as the characters themselves share or relive the events. Evalyn’s crime we learn about through flashback chapters. The Compass Room itself interacts with them as they face their own personal demons. Some of the experiences were creeptastic and others made me shiver.
• Just as in any survival game, bonds form between the test subjects. No one wants their final moments to be alone. We see strong characters emerge and begin to understand that not all of these prisoners are psychopaths.
• Evalyn is an interesting protagonist, and we slowly learn details of her crime. She is not innocent, but you cannot help feeling for her and respecting some of her actions within the Compass Room. Harian shows not tells Evalyn’s moral compass helping us understand her actions.
• The romances were sweet, tender, heated, and I understood both the need for them and the character’s intense feelings.
• The Compass Room is freaky from how it tests them, to the environment. Malfunctions ratchet up the intensity.

Decaffeinated aspects:
• We were kept in the dark about a lot of things. I could handle not knowing Evalyn’s crime, and I think it helped us develop a connection with her. What I needed though was a better understanding of how the world got to this point. When we lost the grey so to speak. How was this room developed? Why? When did machines determine Redemption?
• The implants, sensors and other technologies were lightly touched on, but I have a feeling these will be addressed in the second book.
• The book is relatively short and fast paced. This created tension and suspense, but hurt character development. There simply wasn’t time to flesh them out, and some never made it beyond two dimensional at best.
• Harian’s writing style is a little rough around the edges from awkward sentences to moments of telling not showing. It occasionally pulled me from the story as I had to re-read a passage. Again the telling was needed to keep the pace moving, but I would have gladly slowed down to see it develop.

The Wicked We Have Done was intense and despite the issues mentioned I truly had a blast reading it. I consumed the story in a single day, and found myself caught up in the characters and concept. It was refreshing to see a New Adult dystopian and I hope this trend continues. We need mystery, fantasy, and suspense. Fans of Hunger Games and Divergent will see the similarities. I am hoping the novella Our Broken Sky and the second book Vault of Sins scheduled to release in September will flesh out the world more.

Copy received from publisher in exchange for unbiased review that originally published @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer

[Nessa Luna]

Read this review, and many more on my blog October Tune!

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This has not changed my opinion on the book in any way.

I am going to start off by saying that this book reminded me of the Hunger Games, but for criminals. But in a good way. (I have read (summaries of) some books that reminded me of the Hunger Games in such a way that I thought I was actually reading THG).

Ten criminals (murderers, rapists, people who have committed terrible crimes like that) people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five are send to the Compass Room, where it will be determined whether they are really guilty, or innocent.

Evalyn Ibarra is one of them. Then there are Jacinda, who prefers to be called Jace (why), Casey, Tanner, Valerie, Erity, Stella, Blaise, Salem and Gordon.

At first, I found it a bit hard to remember their names, especially those of the people that weren’t in Evalyn’s alliance group. But in the end I managed to remember! I was rooting for that entire alliance group to survive, because they had all started to grow on me, I started to like them, felt sympathy for them and started to understand why they committed their crimes. I had really hoped to see them all found innocent, but of course that could not happen.

I got sad when certain characters died, and I was so happy to find out that others had survived the Compass Room. There were some other characters, most of them from Evalyn’s past, but I couldn’t really relate to any of them, mainly because they weren’t in the story that often.

There was a lot of action in this book, some of which reminded me of the Hunger Games (events being manipulated by the makers of the Compass Room, like a big wave coming towards the group completely submerging the cabin they were staying at). And of course, the tests the inmates had to go through. All these tests were triggered by items linked to their crimes, for example Evalyn’s item was an old school desk. Some of the inmates were found guilty, after going through their test, and executed, and some of them managed to pass their test and live longer (the tests kept coming back).

I just thought all the action was amazing, I am a big fan of books with a lot of action and this was just the right amount of action for me, I loved it!

Honestly, even when reading the summary, I hadn’t expected a lot of romance in this book, but I can say that I liked every bit of it. I will not tell you with which character Evalyn gets it on (because from the summary it’s obvious it’s her), but I can say that I ship it.

People said this book is basically ‘The Hunger Games meets Lost’, and I can’t say much about the ‘Lost’ part (because I still haven’t seen it), but yes, it is kind of the adult version of The Hunger Games. With convicted grown-ups instead of innocent children. And yes, I loved every bit of it. I am a huge fan of the Hunger Games, and I would love to read more stories like that.

The only thing that I wasn’t very fond of, where the flashbacks. I know it might have been needed to tell the story, but I am just not a big fan of flashbacks. Luckily, these flashbacks were (almost always) announced with the date of the day it happened, so I always knew when I was reading about something that happened in the past, or something that was happening ‘right now’.

Sarah Harian’s writing is simple, easy but also very thrilling. I read 70% of the book in one day, because I just couldn’t stop myself from reading. I wanted to know how the story ended, who would be found guilty, and who would be found innocent. I can say the end surprised me a lot, and I had never expected certain characters to die/be found guilty.

So to everyone who’s read the Hunger Games, and wants to read more stories like this, I recommend The Wicked We Have Done to you!

[EBookObsessed]

Entertaining and thought provoking story.

Be back soon with a complete review.

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