A YA Fantasy Series That Transformed Me Into a 12-Year-Old Again

Kindle search “Jaren”

The Prison Healer (series) by Lynette Noni

When I was in middle school, my friends and I discovered The Song of the Lioness series by Tamora Pierce, a formative text for my young life. In the epic fantasy novels, Alanna of Trebond pretends to be a boy to train as a knight. She falls in love with two very different people as the story goes on. The Prince of Thieves, George. And the actual Prince of the Kingdom, Jonathan.

She chooses the wrong one.

OH she chooses the wrong one!

I could not get over it. I was wounded, devastated, consumed by this loss.

One weekend, a friend and I got together and printed out divorce papers from the internet. Using a quill and ink, to be appropriately dramatic, we filled out the questions, giggling through our braces.

Alanna was getting divorced. Reason? “I’m in love with someone else. Always have been. It was the greatest mistake of my life!” We laughed, we cried, we ended the doomed union.

The only way to describe what happened when I read the Prison Healer series last month is to take you back to that wildly intense young girl who was absolutely consumed by this magical story, these too-important romances.

The Prison Healer tells the story of Kiva, a 17-year-old working as the healer in a death prison. I don’t want to say too much, and really I can’t say too much due to huge important spoilers, but there is magic and there are rebels and royalty involved and let me tell you, when I got to the end of the first book and read that TWIST! Well. Then I was flying.

I stayed up far past my bedtime to finish the second book, a feat when you have a toddler in the other room, taunting you, letting you know exactly how much energy you are not going to have the next day.

I used a precious day of Daisy at daycare to read the third book and when I finished the series? I went back. I searched for a single word on my Kindle (the name of the love interest, OK?) and reread their scenes together starting with book one. What had I missed? How could I recapture the absolutely intense feelings?

Sigh.

I miss it already.

Maybe I’ll start it all over again tomorrow.

When’s the last time you were completely swept up in a teen novel?

PS: If you’re interested, Tamora Pierce explains her love triangle decision here and all I’m saying is, I have more to say.