Dystopian books usually have messed-up premises (for example, The Hunger Games), but for some reason this one struck me as extra messed-up. I mean, selling girls at auction?! 
 I think that seeing something so much more messed-up than our own society is part of what makes dystopian novels so successful. It's like watching the ambulance that pulled up next door, or driving slowly past the car wreck to see what happened. 
 In the start of The Glass Arrow by Kristen Simmons, Aya is running. She grew up in the mountains, away from civilization. Unfortunately, some Trackers have found her and her family. Aya gets caught, two of the people she's with end up dead, and she has no idea what happened to her cousin and the two small children living with them. 
 Aya is taken to "The Garden," a prison where girls are kept before they're auctioned. Aya is a First Rounder (a virgin), which means she can fetch more money. She was also raised in the mountains, which means real food instead of the meals in pills that city people are raised on (unless they're really rich, then they get real food). A side effect of the pills makes a lot of the city girls infertile. Aya is fertile, so she's worth a lot. 
 After realizing this, Aya is careful to injure herself before every auction possible, so that she can't go. 
 "My ma taught me one thing from the beginning: My body is mine. My own. No one else's. Just because someone thinks they have rights to it, doesn't make it true. I thought I understood that before, but here, in this place, it's become more clear than ever how right she was. My flesh and blood- it's the only thing I own, and I'll defend it until I can't fight anymore." 
 While Aya is at The Garden, she makes some surprising friends. One is Brax, a wolf who's friendship with Aya makes me think of the animals in Disney's Pocahontas. The other friend is a boy Aya calls Kiran. He's around Aya's age, but she doesn't know much else about him because he can't talk. And because you can see this coming from a mile off, I don't feel guilty in telling you that as boring as I find love stories, I enjoyed Kiran and Aya's inevitable romance, and I appreciated that it didn't take over the plot but was really just background. 
 This unlikely trio works well, and I found myself emotionally attached to all three of them, despite how completely good they all are (good can be boring, but Kristen Simmons pulls it off). And I loved that this is a stand-alone and I don't have to commit to a whole series. I couldn't put this down, and I read it in one afternoon. 
 This is a version of a review originally posted to my blog, bookreviews77.com.