Noughts & Crosses
By Maggie Stiefvater
Blurb
Sephy is a Cross: she lives a life of privilege and power. But she's lonely, and burns with injustice at the world she sees around her.
Callum is a nought: he's considered to be less than nothing - a blanker, there to serve Crosses - but he dreams of a better life.
They've been friends since they were children, and they both know that's as far as it can ever go. Noughts and Crosses are fated to be bitter enemies - love is out of the question.
Then - in spite of a world that is fiercely against them - these star-crossed lovers choose each other.
But this is love story that will lead both of them into terrible danger . . . and which will have shocking repercussions for generations to come.
Our Review
Noughts and Crosses is a Romeo and Juliet style novel that hammers home the stupidity of inequality based on skin colour in a way that will appeal to YA readers. O and it is a really good book, I couldn’t put it down, to the point I was eating with one hand and holding my book open with the other.
Callum is an inferior white man known as a nought. Sephy is a rich, black girl known as a cross. The two were childhood friends when Callum’s mother worked for Sephy’s family but a big fallout between the mothers meant that their friendship has had to continue on in secret.
As the two get older each wonders what a romance between them would be like but fate and the unjust nature of their society keeps intervening to stop them from having a smooth run at things.
There was a whole host of interesting characters and both sides and via them we get to see the ways in which the system is tipped in favour of the Crosses, otherwise known as ‘daggers.’
The prejudice on both sides is shown in more overt acts of violence but also in terms of language used and systemic inequality.
“Noughts…Even the word was negative. Nothing. Nil. Zero. Nonentities. It wasn’t a name we’d chosen for ourselves.”
Sephy, though well intentioned, is as bad as the other crosses in terms of inadvertently upholding the system. She is very naive when we first meet her but grows as the book progresses.
I loved every aspect of this book and I am a little bit sad for my younger self that I only discovered it at the age of 36.
Our Final Rating...
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