mmm this is definitely a book where MY review and experience reading it are very different from how I think its intended (teen) audience would perceive it. I've read like, kind of a lot of books about North Korea--I'm pretty interested in it in general. So a lot of this was kind of boring to me, and the writing style is pretty straight-forward and clunky, it's mostly just like a long string of sad anecdotes. BUT it's also a great survival story, and I think it would be very shocking to a teen who hasn't already read a ton about North Korea.