Orchid Girls
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of If I Stay comes a gripping dystopian novel about a young woman born and bred for the pleasure of others who breaks free of the lies the world has told her and discovers that love and loyalty may be the most potent force against the system that created her.
After a cataclysm, society rebuilt itself on a simple principle: everyone in their place, everyone with a purpose. Miri never questioned hers. Orchid Girls are beautiful. Orchid Girls are honored. Orchid Girls are chosen.
But when Miri graduates from the Cloister, she discovers what she was chosen for. Not honor, but transaction. Her mind must stay blank, her body pliant, her entire existence in service to the powerful men who hold the broken world together.
Using lessons of observation and silent communication, Miri begins to turn her training against itself, bending ceremony and performance into something her masters never anticipated — strategy, perception, resistance. She risks her safety to connect with others trapped as she is: a fellow Orchid Girl who knows the cost of obedience, and a young man who understands the world in ways Miri does not.
When she sees a chance to escape, she surprises no one more than herself when she takes it.
The Wilds should have destroyed her. Instead, they teach her everything the Cloister never could: how to trust, how to care for others, and how to let herself be cared for in return.
But escape was only the beginning. To survive what comes next, Miri must decide whether the bonds of love she was forbidden to form are powerful enough to unmake the world that made her.
What makes this project different?
Collaboration is more than a catchphrase. Because one of the most broken systems of all is the winner-take-all ethos that contributes to the extreme income-equality that is making our current world a dystopia. Orchid Girls is a true collaboration, a profit-share, where the people who work on this book sink or swim together. Because humanity sinks or swims together.