By Marian Cleary
Appreciation
“She’s sharp. She’s cold. She doesn’t beg anyone to like her.” That’s how my friend described the lead character in Sable Line before handing me the book. “You’ll love her. She reminds me of you.”
I wasn’t sure if I should say thanks or throw the book across the room.
Ruthless. Guarded. Unrelenting. Calculated. These are the words people use—critics, fans, and more than a few characters—to describe Cora Nix, the seventeen-year-old protagonist of Rae Liddell’s YA debut Sable Line, a post-collapse survival novel that smolders with cruelty and silence. Even the readers who adore the book often feel the need to issue disclaimers about its heroine: “Cora’s honestly the worst, but also…the best,” says one Goodreads reviewer, before going on to list all the ways she fails to be relatable or “nice.”
It was in the face of these critiques—these little tugs on Cora’s character—that I realized how deeply I connected to her.
If she’s too cold, too hard, too much—I’ve been all of those things. So has anyone who’s had to armor up just to make it to the next day. Anyone who’s measured every facial expression for safety. Anyone who’s spent their life learning how to scan a room in half a second, not because it’s a fun party trick, but because sometimes, it means getting out in one piece.
In Sable Line, society has collapsed into a series of fortified city-cores and the no-man’s lands in between. Cora lives on the edge of that division, in a border sector where resources are scarce, cruelty is currency, and protection comes at a cost. When her younger brother is conscripted into a shadowy military program, she trades herself in his place. She doesn’t cry. She doesn’t hesitate. She just goes.
But it isn’t bravery that motivates her. It’s math. She’s the stronger one. She can survive what he won’t. She sees herself as a currency. And in this world, that’s all you can afford to be.
The part of the book that gutted me most wasn’t a fight scene or a death—though there are plenty of both—it was when Cora realizes that the first time anyone touched her with gentleness, it made her recoil. “Gentle made me feel like I’d break,” she says. “Better to be handled like a weapon. At least that made sense.”
That line haunted me. Because I’ve flinched at kindness too.
Like Cora, I had to grow up too fast. My house wasn’t filled with drones and patrol units, but with long silences and slammed doors. I wasn’t dodging shrapnel, but I learned early that sometimes, you start the argument on purpose—just to control when the blow comes. That way, it doesn’t feel like a surprise.
I’ve read countless books—memoirs, novels, essays—about trauma, about rage, about surviving the aftermath of people who claim to love you. But Sable Line did something different. It didn’t try to redeem Cora. It didn’t soften her edges or force her to learn a lesson. It didn’t turn her suffering into enlightenment. Instead, it let her be cruel. It let her be wrong. And it showed us why that cruelty kept her alive.
In one brutal scene, Cora throws a cup of water in someone’s face—not because she wants to hurt them, but because she doesn’t know what else to do with the terror of needing them. “I couldn’t let him be real,” she thinks. “If he was real, he could reach me.”
For years, I thought that kind of behavior—the violence that lives in survivors—was something to bury under self-help jargon. But reading Cora’s story, I saw something else: not just damage, but strategy. Not just pain, but precision.
The Hunger Games showed me a girl on fire. Sable Line gave me a girl made of flint and scars. One who doesn’t apologize for burning the hand that tries to hold her.
People say characters like Cora are “unlikable.” But what they mean is that she doesn’t perform pain in a way that flatters the viewer. She’s not a tragic doll. She doesn’t say “thank you” when someone throws her a bone. She takes what she needs and leaves a warning in her place.
There’s a moment near the end of the book where a fellow recruit, someone who’s tried again and again to reach her, finally asks, “What would it take for you to let someone care about you?” Cora doesn’t answer. She just walks away.
And in that silence, I understood her more than I’ve ever understood any other fictional girl.
I’ve been the one who walks away. From people who tried. From people who meant well. Because sometimes the price of letting someone see you—really see you—is too high. And sometimes, it’s not because we think they’ll hurt us. It’s because we know they won’t. And that’s even more terrifying.
The world loves its survivors when they’re photogenic. When they cry in just the right way. When they say the “right” things about forgiveness and resilience. But Sable Line doesn’t care about any of that. It says: here is a girl who survived. Here’s what it cost.
And here’s why she doesn’t owe anyone a performance of healing.
That’s the gift this book gave me. Not just representation, but reflection. Not just a heroine, but permission.
So the next time someone calls me guarded, or difficult, or cruel, maybe I’ll say thanks.
And maybe I’ll recommend this book.Author Bio
Marian Cleary is a Brooklyn-based writer whose work explores trauma, rage, and the stories women are told to make themselves smaller. Her essays have appeared in Electric Dialogue, Pastel Static, and The Hollow Review. She is currently working on her first book, a memoir about girlhood and violence.
