Ten years after Juliette Ferrars and Aaron Warner Anderson led a worldwide rebellion and founded the New Republic of the West, the fallen Reestablishment survives in one last stronghold: Ark Island, an authoritarian enclave where constant surveillance is sold as security and even emotions must be felt with caution. James Anderson, Warner's younger brother, achieves what Warner never could and infiltrates the island, though he ends up in a prison cell for his trouble. Rosabelle Wolff is a twenty-year-old contract killer whose every movement is monitored by synthetic intelligence and who never hesitates when ordered to kill, because the wages keep her chronically ill younger sister, Clara, alive. When the Reestablishment prepares a devastating move after a decade of uneasy quiet, the lives of these two enemies collide. Told through alternating perspectives, the story follows their forced, uneasy alliance as Rosabelle conceals her true loyalties and both are pulled into a mission that could decide the fate of the New Republic. Set a generation into the same world as the original Shatter Me series, this opening volume blends fast-moving action with a fraught, slow-burning romance, examining the tension between safety and freedom and what it means to reclaim one's humanity inside a system built to erase it.
