This review originally appeared at http://giantsquidbooks.com/2014/04/15... 
 Fury by Charlotte McConaghy took me by surprise. I can usually tell how I'm going to feel about a book from the first couple chapters. But with Fury, I did a complete 180. Though it took me a while to get in to the story, about a third of the way through it grabbed me and took off running, dragging me along with it! 
 The premise is a good one: in a future where anger has been "cured", the uncured are feared and wild. Josi, who for years has gone on annual killing sprees she can't remember, is particularly wild and particularly afraid-of herself. The story is told in fragments: it jumps around chronologically and the POV changes quite frequently. I think this is part of the reason that I had trouble getting in to the book- I just struggled to find my footing. 
 By the end both the rotating POV's and the chronology shifts were working for me-the story jumps back and forth between Josi and Luke as they're falling in love and Josi in an asylum, and the parts about Luke and Josi are framed as the story Josi is telling her therapist. And as the story built up steam it became clear that Ms. McConaghy is a master of suspense and reveal-I gasped out loud in a few places and the chronological jumps were timed perfectly to keep me on the edge of my seat. 
 I should say: Fury is described as an "adult" novel-that is, not YA. So actually my first observation is: damn, have I gotten used to really, really violent YA! Fury is brutal at times: the descriptions of Josi's violent episodes made me cringe. But I liked the way Ms. McConaghy deals with violence: Josi is horrified by the violence she causes and other characters have that kind of reaction too (except those who don't... as a result of the eponymous, humanity-stripping cure). 
 Fury isn't perfect-for the first third of the book I felt fairly adrift, and I was pretty frustrated when Luke reveals a pretty damn big secret to Josi near the end (no spoilers here, don't worry) with no consequences. But all in all Fury, once I got in to it, was a riveting read. 
 3/5 for characters-my biggest complaint was the "instalove" between Josi and Luke, which I'm just tired of, even in books that are billed as romances (The Cure series is described as "romantic science-fiction".) 
 4/5 for worldbuilding-I liked that the dystopia is one that derives clearly from our own world-it was easy to see how they got there, easy to imagine how people might slip into thinking that the cure is a good idea. That's something I really value and rarely find in a story. 
 4/5 for prose-this book reads beautifully. 
 and 5/5 for what I thought was an original approach to dystopia and a great story! 
 Fury by Charlotte McConaghy: 4/5