Evalyn Ibarra never expected to be an accused killer and experimental prison test subject. A year ago, she was a normal college student. Now she’s been sentenced to a month in the compass room—an advanced prison obstacle course designed by the government to execute justice.

If she survives, the world will know she’s innocent.

Locked up with nine notorious and potentially psychotic criminals, Evalyn must fight the prison and dismantle her past to stay alive. But the system prized for accuracy appears to be killing at random.

She doesn’t plan on making friends.

She doesn’t plan on falling in love, either.

A funny, recurring conversation I always have with my friends is about the stark contrast between books I like and movies I like.  See, I love me a good action movie. Give me Jason Statham, Mark Wahlberg or a nice gory horror film any day of the week. But when it comes to reading, I want the “chick-flicks” I want heartbreak, I want emotion, I want to be left so emotionally wrecked that I can’t even see through my tears.  The Wicked We Have done brought everything that I like in movies so perfectly to a book that it surprisingly worked incredibly well for me!

What struck me right off the bat with this one was how original it was. First of all there is the fact that it is an NA novel and it’s not just a sexy-times romance about two broken characters coming together and boinking, how refreshing is that? I loved the idea of these criminals being thrown into an area and tested to see where their morality lies and if they are a fit for the death penalty or not.  I mean that’s the big argument against the death penalty right? The system isn’t perfect and what if an innocent loses their life.  But in the world of The Wicked We Have Done they have created a system that implants a chip into the back of a criminals head and they throw them into a Compass Room where they are faced with tests and their reactions are constantly monitored.  Cool, hey? What made this so intense was that there was genuinely good people in this dome and there were also people who were out for blood. And was there ever blood, people exploding, stabbings, shootings, you name it.  The action scenes were excellently written and the pacing was kept up so well that I was on the edge of my seat for the entirety of the novel.  After mentioning all of the blood and gore in these pages I’m not sure what it says about me that I had so much fun reading it, but I did!

As I am sure you can guess from above, we are greeted to some very… interesting characters in this novel.  Our MC Evalyn was someone that I came to like quite a bit by the end of the story.  She is very closed off when we meet her and struggling with all that has come about since she committed her crime (which we find out more about through flashbacks in the story.)  She proves to be really strong and intelligent in the Compass Room and I loved being in her head.  There is a bit of insta-love when it comes to her and Casey, which I could have done without but I do see and understand what the romance added to the story and Evalyn’s will to live.  She wasn’t the only one finding herself in this room, we are treated to a budding lesbian romance which was really refreshing and didn’t feel insta-lovey to me at all.  I really liked Jace and Valerie. Oh and there is also the young brainy boy Tanner who I liked for all of his technical thinking as he tried to figure out the inner workings of the Compass Room.  So yea, I liked the characters and even the really bad ones that they were thrown into the room with served to keep me highly entertained.

One thing I did long for a bit more in the story was a more about the character, Nick.  He came into Evalyn’s life prior to her crime and it’s made clear that he was a big part of it.  Through Evalyn we are led to not trust him at all and know he is not a good person but I wanted more to define just how crazy bad he was.  I was trying to explain this to a friend and it got me all tongue twisted, but the best way to put it is that I didn’t NEED more to enforce his darkness but I just WANTED more.  I was perfectly ok to believe he was as twisted as we are led to believe but I wanted to read more about what made him tick.  Maybe a novella could be in the works? A girl can dream, right?

If you are looking for a thrill ride, Sarah Harian’s debut is sure to fit the bill.  I will anxiously be awaiting anything (AHEM, see above paragraph) that comes out in this series.

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