After a marijuana-addled brawl with a rival gang, 16-year-old Azael wakes up to find himself surrounded by a familiar set of concrete walls and a locked door. Juvie again, he thinks. But he can't really remember what happened or how he got picked up. He knows his MS13 boys faced off with some punks from Crazy Crew. There were bats, bricks, chains. A knife. But he can't remember anything between that moment and when he woke behind bars.

Azael knows prison, and something isn't right about this lockup. No phone call. No lawyer. No news about his brother or his homies. The only thing they make him do is watch some white girl in some cell. Watch her and try to remember.

Lexi Allen would love to forget the brawl, would love for it to disappear back into the Xanax fog it came from. And her mother and her lawyer hope she chooses not to remember too much about the brawl―at least when it's time to testify.

Lexi knows there's more at stake in her trial than her life alone, though. She's connected to him, and he needs the truth. The knife cut, but somehow it also connects. ( )

good lord, this was heartbreaking. ( )

There are a lot of heart-wrenching books out there. But there's something special about THE KNIFE AND THE BUTTERFLY. The latest by Ashley Hope Perez, this novel is artfully written, with a voice that reads so authentic the story feels horrifically real. Horrifically because the narrator is a young boy in jail, awaiting sentencing, and knowing something terrible has gone down. Something that cost a life.

Azael isn't a bad kid. At least, he doesn't think he is. At 16 he's found himself kinda homeless, abandoned by family other than his brother, and running with a gang. The gang is his family, his brother has recently been brought into the fold, he's a wonderful artist and he has a great girl. But his girl, Becca, wishes things were different. She wants Az to go straight, to do right by her. And Az swears he's trying -- he just can't seem to get his head on straight. This is what Azael remembers anyway. In his nearly-bare cell, he only has some partially blacked-out police records and a contraband sketchbook hidden under his mattress to fill in the blanks.

On the other side, there's Lexi. She's also being held, and she's trying not to remember the brawl that got her here. These are two teens that normally wouldn't cross each others paths. And it takes Azael a few "observation" to realize it, but now he knows she knows something. He thinks she's the key to his memory...and possibly his freedom.

THE KNIFE AND THE BUTTERFLY is a striking, surprising novel, one to watch later this year during award season. Its a novel that really shook me, and one that I'm excited to have experienced. ( )