ENTER THE BODY By Joy McCullough

I received this book for free from Reviewer Purchase in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Enter the Body by Joy McCullough
Published by Dutton Books for Young Readers on 3/14/23
Genres: Historical, Retellings, Young Adult
Pages: 336
Format: Ebook
Source: Reviewer Purchase
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In the room beneath a stage's trapdoor, Shakespeare’s dead teenage girls compare their experiences and retell the stories of their lives, their loves, and their fates in their own words. Bestselling author Joy McCullough offers a brilliant testament to how young women can support each other and reclaim their stories in the aftermath of trauma.

Short and Sweet Review

In the Trap Room, a room beneath the theater stage, there’s a room full of girls who have met a tragic end in Shakespeare’s plays. Ophelia, Cordelia, and Juliet share their stories and maybe even change things around to make it so they’re living their own lives and not one that was written for them.

Enter the Body is a novel in verse, which was interesting because through this style each girl told her story differently. The girls take turns telling their stories and how they ended up dying in the tragic ways they have. I liked reading their stories, mainly because I’m only familiar with Romeo and Juliet. Ophelia and Cordelia were more mature than Juliet and they did tell their stories as if they were older. The sharing of stories in the trap room formed a bond between not only the three, but with some of the other girls who were listening in the background. At first we see them share what has happened in a way that we’re all familiar with: the way Shakespeare wrote it, but they decide to take matters into their own hands and change the parts of their stories that made them so tragic and change it so that they’re the author of their own fates.

This book was short and easy to get through and I enjoyed how creative it was in how it was written in verse and how each character had their own flair.