The Lure
by Lynne Ewing
Publication: 11th February 2014
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Pages: 288
Genre: Contemporary
Age Appropriate: Young Adult
From the bestselling author of the Daughters of the Moon series comes a gritty, sexy novel about a teen who is forced to become a "lure"-a beautiful girl who is used to lure victims of gang violence.
Fifteen-year-old Blaise Montgomery lives in the gritty outskirts of Washington, DC, where a stray bullet can steal a life on the way to school. Drugs and violence are the only ways to survive, so Blaise and her friends turn to gangs for safety, money, and love. When Blaise is invited to join Core 9, one of the most infamous crews, she jumps at the chance. Though her best guy friends, Rico and Satch, warn her about the danger, she agrees to be beaten for a minute straight as part of the gang's initiation ritual.
Now Blaise is finally part of a crew. A family.
But things get only more dangerous when she becomes a member of Core 9 and tensions with a rival gang heat up. Trek, the head of Core 9, asks Blaise to be his "lure," the sexy bait he'll use to track down enemy gang members and exact revenge. Rico and Satch tell her it's a death sentence, but Blaise can't resist the money and unparalleled power. As Trek puts Blaise in increasingly dangerous situations, she begins to see that there's more to lose than she ever realized-including Satch, the one person who has the power to get under her skin. With death lurking around every corner, should Blaise continue to follow the only path she's ever known, or cut and run?
Fifteen-year-old Blaise Montgomery lives in the gritty outskirts of Washington, DC, where a stray bullet can steal a life on the way to school. Drugs and violence are the only ways to survive, so Blaise and her friends turn to gangs for safety, money, and love. When Blaise is invited to join Core 9, one of the most infamous crews, she jumps at the chance. Though her best guy friends, Rico and Satch, warn her about the danger, she agrees to be beaten for a minute straight as part of the gang's initiation ritual.
Now Blaise is finally part of a crew. A family.
But things get only more dangerous when she becomes a member of Core 9 and tensions with a rival gang heat up. Trek, the head of Core 9, asks Blaise to be his "lure," the sexy bait he'll use to track down enemy gang members and exact revenge. Rico and Satch tell her it's a death sentence, but Blaise can't resist the money and unparalleled power. As Trek puts Blaise in increasingly dangerous situations, she begins to see that there's more to lose than she ever realized-including Satch, the one person who has the power to get under her skin. With death lurking around every corner, should Blaise continue to follow the only path she's ever known, or cut and run?
My Thoughts.
The Lure by Lynne Ewing is a contemporary book focusing on the initiation into and the life of belonging to a gang.Gritty and raw told through the eyes of Blaise, raised in a neighbourhood where most people are poor and the only answer for most teenagers is to join a gang, in Blaise's case she is being raised by her sick grandmother, money is very tight and so like her childhood friends Satch and Rico she decides to join their gang Core 9.
Initial into the gang is to be beaten for 1 minute straight without fighting back, after successfully completing the beating Blaise feels like part of a family, but life in a gang is not as great as it appeared to be when she was on the outside looking in, but when Trek the leader of Core 9 tells her that she will be their lure (enticing opposing gang members, so that they let their guard down and subsequently get beaten up by Core 9 members) against her better judgement and without really being given a choice she accepts.
But reality comes crashing down when someone she lured comes after her and results in the death of an innocent bystander, that Blaise comes to realise that this may not be the life that she wants after all, getting out is a lot harder than getting in, and when Trek sets Blaise, Satch and Rico up and turns on them it will end fatally for one of them. and will shock the remaining two into realising that they've got to take the chance and get out while they can.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, the insight into what it takes to not only join a gang but belong to one as well had me very intrigued and in places shocked that this does actually happen.
A fast-paced, quick read that contemporary fans should devour.
I give this 4/5 stars.
Lynne Ewing is an American author and a screen writer.
She always had to move around a lot when she was growing up because her father was in the Marine Corps. She has two sisters. Lynne graduated from high school in Lima, Peru after attending seven other schools. While she was in Peru, she learned to speak Spanish. She attended the University of California at Santa Barbara. When she was 30 years old, she began writing for newspapers, documentaries, magazines, and did screen writing. She also counsels troubled teens. Her first books were Drive-By and Party Girl. Drive-By took six years to write, and Party Girl has been made into a movie called Living the Life. She has written the completed Daughters of the Moon and Sons of the Dark series. She lives in Los Angeles and Washington D.C.. Ms. Ewing has two children, Jonathan, a molecular biologist, and Amber, an international lawyer. She has also traveled to Japan, China, Russia, Europe, Malaysia, Singapore, Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand. She has begun a new series called Sisters of Isis.
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