City of Cannibals.

 

City of Cannibals, by Ricki Thompson

Ok, I admit, I picked this book up under false pretenses. I thought this book would be about a society that didn't exist, either yet, or ever, where cannibals had taken over against a small resistence. Nope, not even close. 

Dell is a sixteen year old girl living with her father, brother and aunt on a hillside beyond what she knows as the City of Cannibals. She's been warned never to venture too near or she may be kidnapped by the cannibals and eaten. However, the increasing brutality of her father and the kindnesses bestowed upon the family by a boy from the city give Dell the courage to escape her home and venture beyond with the hope of a better life on her own. She discovers a new kind of hope, and brutality, in the city that she comes to learn is London.

City of Cannibals gives you a personal view of the happenings of England in 1536, when King Henry VIII desired a divorce from his wife, Catherine, and the church would not grant it. He divorced her anyway, and began his way through many wives. Dell's point of view gives you the perspective of the aftermath to the churches in England, as King Henry chose to take over. This book is well written, beautiful, and, at first, very innocent, at least in Dell's perspective of the world.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone, but it's especially great for teens studying this time period, to get another, (although fictional) point of view on that tumultuous time in history.