Booklist Starred Review for Vessel!

Ridiculously excited to report that Vessel received its third starred review, in the October 1st issue of Booklist!!!

I'm simply over the moon about this.  It's so wonderful to hear that people are enjoying Liyana's story.  Yay!  And thank you so much to everyone who has shared their kind words about the book.

Vessel
By Sarah Beth Durst
(Margaret K. McElderry; ISBN 9781442423763; September 2012; Fall Catalog)

Liyana is a vessel, the chosen one, nurtured, trained, and offered up by her clan for a great honor: giving her life so their goddess, Bayla, may return to earth to inhabit her body. But the goddess does not return. At the end of her day of sacrifice, Liyana is still alive, her clan having left her alone, disgraced, and in grave danger in the desert. Vessel is the read-alike for your Hunger Games–obsessed teens. From the quest to find the other clans’ spurned vessels, to the two attractive love interests, to the intelligent, independent young heroine, this folkloric fantasy, while harkening to that ever-popular novel and movie, is unique in its own web of clever, complex characters and attention-absorbing adventure. Its setting alone is so vital that it becomes another character, a part of the action. Readers will feel the desert heat, the earth-numbing droughts, the vicious sandstorms and resulting sandwolves, and the bizarre sensations of a goddess living within the body of its human vessel. Brilliantly riveting, Vessel’s only disappointment is its single volume, a fate that relegates Liyana, her lovers, and her friends to their own vessel, a single book.

-- Booklist, starred review