Done Dirt Cheap was a refreshing read! It is so different from anything else I have picked up.
It's about two very unlikely friends and let me tell you I was here for that friendship!
Tourmaline is our more sheltered character who lives with her dad. Her dad is the president of a biker crew called the Wardens. Tourmaline starts the book off thinking she knows everything about her family (the wardens). It sets her on a journey to finding truth and herself in the process.

Virginia is the opposite of Tourmaline. She has lived a rough life where no one has her back. She is content in this life until her job becomes learning about the wardens. Befriending Tourmaline changes everything for Virginia. She starts to find hope that there is value to her. 
Their friendship makes zero sense to the people around that but perfect to them. I loved the strong bound the form and the fact that they are ride or die for each other. These are some bad ass women!

SEXY ALERT the men these girls get allied with you guys! I could have read the sexy scenes in this over and over! I wanted more. They were sexy but also deep. I loved seeing the progression of each relationship throughout the book. 

This was a fresh, gritty, fantastic read. 

Favorite Quote 
"When girls stick together in this world, they're harder to pick off"

There were so so many moments I loved in this story - great main characters with complex motivations and histories. Around the last third of the novel things did feel slightly disjointed, and the immediate&long term goals of the girls were not as clear, but overall this was a fantastic read. I'd love to read more about these characters.

<i>Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.</i> 

<b> TW: Ableist language, i.e. "crazy" used a couple of times and "fuckt**d" used once.</b>

I'll be honest, I didn't know a damn thing about this book except that it was a debut novel, but the cover and it's premise had me intrigued so I requested a copy. Often times I am hesitant to check out debut authors because I have no frame of reference for the author's style. However this time I can tell you it worked out superbly for me. 

The books revolves around two strong female protagonists. Tourmaline is the daughter of the president of a biker gang called the Wardens, and is struggling with her mother being in prison (for which she blames herself). Virginia was "sold" by her mother to a skeevy lawyer when she was unable to make good on her debt, and the sleazebag uses Virginia for his money making schemes. Now he wants her to investigate the Wardens so that he can dismantle them, so Virginia connects with Tourmaline in an attempt to infiltrate the gang. 

I'm a sucker for badass women, and you can bump that up when you have badass women becoming friends. This isn't a conventional friendship or an instant one, and I loved watching it slowly develop through the course of the book. Both characters are flawed, and that has an effect on the events that occur as well as their relationship. They are both very strong and come from vastly different backgrounds. They are also often at odds with each other's thought processes and methods, the only thing drawing them together is that they're alone in their worlds dominated by men, which is the foundation of their solidarity. Lemon's message shine through the both of them: being a woman is not easy, it is a struggle to be taken seriously and claim autonomy over your life. 

I knew nothing about biker gangs prior to this book, and I loved that it was woven into the story without feeling like I had a bunch of information dumped on me. It felt like an entire world of its own, and it was interesting to learn about it from Tourmaline's POV, because she's the bystander who has all the knowledge from growing up around it but isn't a part of the group as a member. Lemon also beautifully addresses class differences and its intersections with race. There's a black character in the book, and at various points has commentary on how the hierarchies and rituals of the club have different implications for a black person in a predominantly white group. She also does a good job highlighting Tourmaline's class and white privilege that gets called out in some of the dialogue. There's also an element of romance which doesn't overwhelm the main plot, a forbidden romance, which was predictable but I liked it. 

There was some ableist language (couple of characters refer to women as "crazy" in a scene, and one of them uses the slur "fuckt**d" in reference to himself) which I had issue with, so keep an eye out for that. 

All in all, this was a fast-paced and gritty read exploring some complex issues surrounding being a woman as well as female friendships. I really enjoyed reading it and I'm looking forward to reading more of Lemon's work in the future.

This was just an excellent story about female friendships and growing up. The motorcycles were cool, and watching Tourmaline navigate her life and become her own person was great, but my absolute favorite part of this entire story was the friendship between Virginia and Tourmaline. They "randomly" decide to come together and just be friends. Like, this is us now, we're best friends because we're both angry at the world. And even when things get bad, they are STILL FRIENDS. It was so great to see and actual friendship revolve around forgiveness and understanding. I loved so much about this book, and I teared up at least twice because of the amazing strength of these relationships despite all of the challenges.

This was one of my anticipated reads of this year and I thought it was pretty good. The premise of these two biker chicks and their friendship is what sold me, along with their stark differences and tenacity with every situation that comes their way. Although it was as good as I was hoping it would be, it is still good and worth a read. These chicks don't play around.

I could not for the life of me get into this. I thought it was extremely boring, I just didn't relate to the characters or find any of them to be particularly interesting or compelling.

I couldn't get into this book since the beginning is so jumbled. I gave up half way through.

This book opens with very little set up so it takes about a third of the book for even the basic plot to get started. The two characters are appearantly constrained by a ton of rules, but I have no clue what they are so all the plot twists seem out of nowhere. I didn't understand or relate to the characters so clearly this wasn't for me.

This is one of the more intriguing YA books I have read in a long time. Initially I selected it for the cover image but found the writing style, characters and plot woked together brilliantly. The writing style is somewhat jarring at first but when  I became more attuned to it as I read and it has a great rhythm and vividness. I particularly enjoyed the descriptions throughout the book of the mountainous landscapes and of the town resting in the wilderness. A lovely reminder that a place can seem so peaceful and yet be so noisy and fierce. The setting connected the dual components of the location to this story of order and chaos, delicate relationships and blunt brutality.

The book centres on the two female characters, Tourmaline and Virginia. Tourmaline is the daughter of the president of a local biker gang, who she insists are just a club. She keeps her distance from people while working very hard to make her life looks perfect. While looking forward to starting college in a few months, Tourmaline is struggling with the events that resulted in her mother's incarceration. Virginia is working for a local lawyer, a man uses his knowledge of the law to break it, after her mother 'sold' her into his debt to repay legal fees. Hazard, the lawyer, wants Virginia to infiltrate the biker gang and she chooses to do this by befriending Tourmaline. Each girl wants something from the other but their experiences change things and the beginnings of an authentic friendship develops between the two. A friendship that is often tested and bruised in the course of the book. 

Virginia's character is tough but vivid and bright, Tourmaline is more murky, twisting. I struggled to get a grasp on her character at times, she pushed so hard to be a certain way so it made sense that she hid things from herself as well as us. Portraying the loss of an innocence can be hard to write but it was done very well by Lemon. Her motives are not clear to us or herself, she is however very clear on her boundaries. Virginia is a young woman whose focus is survival, with one eye on what failing at it would entail. It struck me that the end goals weren't laid out clearly but the underlying desire of two different outcomes were clear in both girls' minds. I really enjoyed how this relationship developed throughout the book. Virginia's romantic entanglement was more complex and compelling than Tourmaline's but both rang true. The unfolding of the plot was given good balance with the development of relationships and the ending of the novel was ultimately very satisfying. 

The following line needs including in this because it works perfectly in a devastating scene it also say something that is important to emphasise in YA literature:
'We're friends because when girls - women - are alone in this world, they're easier to pick off.'

For fans of: Blake Nelson, Laurie Halse Anderson.

Sometimes when you request an e-galley you really don’t know what you’re going to get, especially if it’s by a debut author or an author that you’re not familiar with. Done Dirt Cheap was a book that fit that criteria for me, but I felt drawn to it with its sassy cover and gritty synopsis. I’m happy to report that Done Dirt Cheap has 100% renewed my faith in trying out new authors and diving into unfamiliar plots, because it was a truly engaging and utterly fantastic read that I wish I could completely purge from my brain so I could have the pleasure of reading for the first time again.

Done Dirt Cheap revolves around two very different but very strong female protagonists. Tourmaline Harris is the daughter of the president of a notorious motorcycle club, who’s family has been ripped apart by her mother’s imprisonment and the role she played in it. Virginia’s mother essentially sold her into indentured servitude to a sleazy lawyer who leverages her for money making schemes from participating in pageants to drug dealing. Their two paths collide when Virginia is given the assignment to essentially infiltrate the Warden’s inner circle to assist in dismantling them, and she targets Tourmaline, a classmate, as the best way in.

What truly makes Done Dirt Cheap stand out is its portrayal of female relationships. Tourmaline and Virginia never have a conventional friendship, and are often at odds with each other’s desires and methods. Yet they keep gravitating toward each other for the solitude and safety that can only be found by standing with another woman in a life dominated by men. They draw their strengths and personalities from very different backgrounds (Virginia from the terror of an abusive family, Tourmaline from the comfort of being a loved daughter), but at the core of the novel is the overarching theme that it is still very difficult to be a woman and be taken seriously, and be given the autonomy to run your own life, even in 21st century, modern day society. Tourmaline often refers to herself as a “paper girl,” an outline to be filled with the wishes and expectations of others, and though privileged in many ways where Virginia is not, it really resonated with me, as it reinforces the

The biker club element never feels cliché or like it’s trying too hard. I really enjoyed how their motives were convincingly portrayed as morally gray, and how they were sort of a modern day vigilante group. This was my first time really engaging with any media featuring biker clubs, and I found reading about the complex code and rules really interesting, especially as Tourmaline, who’s grown up on the periphery of the club her entire life, learns to navigate them and manipulate them to her benefit as an adult. Lemon has done an incredible job of fleshing out an entire social system in less than 400 pages.

This novel also showcases upper YA romance done right for a book that’s not specifically being marketed as a romance. The romances were slow-burn and had a touch of real-world angst (AKA serious relationship boundaries such as age, ultimate goals in life, past emotional trauma, etc.). The relationships are built on the tenuous foundations of the teenage to adult transition, but are deliciously swoon-worthy when the wait does pay off.

Overall: If you like strong female characters who don’t always seem like heroines, complex social dynamics that will split your head and heart, and stories about the struggles that are still faced by being a female, this is a story for you. Gritty, complicated, and achingly accurate in its portrayal of balancing on the age of eighteen, I cannot recommend Done Dirt Cheap enough.

I really enjoyed this book. My favorite part was the writing. Lemon has some serious talent in weaving lyrical and beautiful sentences. I found myself highlighting so many passages because they made me feel something, whether it be sadness, happiness, or I just appreciated how something was worded. I would have no problem recommending this based on the writing alone. 

But, I’m also recommending it for the story. I enjoyed everything about this plot and how all the events unfolded. I was on the edge of my seat excited to see what would happen next. I was seriously interested in what was happening to the characters and found myself fully invested in the plot and what was happening to and because of them.

Troumaline and Virginia were incredibly well-developed characters–dimensional, well-rounded, and likeable. I adored them both. However, I found many of the secondary characters to be underdeveloped. I enjoyed all of the characters, especially the two leading ladies–I’m always a sucker for kick-butt female leads, but definitely thought the secondary ones in this story fell to the wayside often. The two I had the most problem with were Troumaline’s parents. They needed so much more, especially her mom, and I felt that would have made the story even better.

While we’re on the subject of what didn’t work for me, I thought that the story sometimes handled time strangely. What I mean by this is that the plot jumped around quite a lot and often failed to demonstrate the passage of time well. There were some parts of the story that I had to reread a few times because I was confused as to how the characters were just at this place and now, all of the sudden, they were somewhere else with no explanation as to how they got there. I felt this problem a little bit past solely time passage though, and found some parts of the plot poorly explained or written in a confusing way. Still, this didn’t impact my reading experience too much.

Between the secondary characters needing more development and the sometimes confusing writing, they were why I docked my rating from 5 stars to 4. If these two things had been cleared up, this would easily have been a 5 star rating from me, because I really did enjoy this novel and found myself wanting more.

Especially so after that ending! I loved the cliffhanger ending of this novel and felt that it was fitting. It left me wanting more of the characters, and I felt that everything wrapped up nicely–and without the bow on top. I love a realistic ending. However, I did find a few plot holes throughout the story and was left a bit wanting at things that were mentioned in the beginning and never really resolved in a way that bringing up said thing made sense to the story. That wasn’t anything too detrimental, but I definitely think consistency was on the verge of being a problem with this story.

One final thing I want to touch on before I wrap up this review is the romance. I loved Troumaline’s relationship with Cash. (This relationship is hinted at right away, so I don’t feel that this is a spoiler.) I liked seeing the interracial couple in the typically white-ruled motorcycle club. This was awesome to see, and I liked that Troumaline actively worked to breakdown stereotypes and explain why this was something that shouldn’t be a problem. Everything about their relationship was wonderful and made sense with the story.

Virginia and *no spoilers*, on the other hand, did not work as well for me. Although I liked both characters individually, I didn’t really like them together. I also didn’t like that Lemon used the concept of, through Troulamine’s words, “Virginia was a different 18. She was an older 18 than I was.” to justify the age difference. The whole thing still left me unsettled solely because, well, Virginia is only 18 and a very damaged 18 that has no concept of what a healthy relationship is. So, it didn’t sit well with me. I wanted to like how things played out for her, but I just didn’t.

Overall, I definitely had some issues with this book, but as a whole I completely fell in love with this story and Lemon’s writing. I will have absolutely no problem picking up what she writes in the future. In fact, I’m eagerly awaiting it. This book struck so many cords with me, and I absolutely recommend it.

Book will officially be released 7th March 2017

Preorder from Book Depository here – $16.06

*I was provided with a free copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. That did not sway my thoughts; all opinions are and remain my own.*

I gave this book a shot because I love contemporary, books about bad ass girls, and also because my favorite book, All the Ugly and Wonderful Things, followed a motorcycle gang. Unfortunately this book was not for me, and I was bored out of my mind. After about 25% I started skim reading, and I don't regret it. Just wasn't for me.

I was kind of doubtful from the description and the cover that this was going to be "my type" of book, but what do they say don't judge a book by it's cover! This was well written and had just the right amount of tenseness throughout. It touched upon some dark themes but never felt overwhelming. Great for fans of sons of anarchy.

I loved this book. Sarah Nicole Lemon created a fantastic world with strong women who lean on each other in the absence of other support. I will definitely be recommending this book, and I am also going to preorder it for myself.

This book is not perfect, however, and could use some editing of unnecessary/repetitive lines here and there. But given that this is Lemon's first book, I expect that those issues will be improved upon in the future and I look forward to reading her next title.

Actual Rating: 3.75

I was kind of disappointed with Done Dirt Cheap. It wasn't at all what I expected. I expected a love story with two girls (I don't know why I thought this but I did), and I couldn't help but be disappointed the whole book because it wasn't. I think this book had really great feminist themes and had some great female characters, but I just found it hard to follow. I felt like there were whole chapters and passages missing from the book. Sometimes it just didn't make sense or the text didn't flow. That being said the girls were really great characters, and I enjoyed their arcs and the love interests. I wish Cash and Jason had some more development. It also felt like the girls very quickly fell in love, which I didn't like. 

All in all, I liked this book, but I think it could have been a lot better.

A wild, captivating, sexy ride! This story pulled me in to the point that I never wanted it to end. It's beautifully written and full of girl power!  If you're in the mood to read something YA that has a Sons of Anarchy touch, then this is the book for you!

This story was billed as Sons of Anarchy (which I've never seen) meets Thelma & Louise (also not obsessed with). However, I was intrigued. 

I couldn't put this book down. Set in Virginia, we follow 2 teen girls, Tourmaline and Virginia, who both just graduated high school. Their stories become intertwined outside of a prison, where Tourmaline was visiting her mother. Tourmaline's father is the president of a motorcycle club and Virginia works for a corrupt lawyer, who sends her in to gather intel about the Wardens. I think readers who loved the rural setting in Jeff Zentner's The Serpent King will enjoy this story as well. Lemon's writing is descriptive and beautiful. She has created a cast of memorable characters whose pasts collide in the most unexpected ways. 

A story of friendship, the bonds of family, and how far we will go to protect the people we love.

Wow. I loved the story, the complicated friendship between the main characters, and the romances, but what really left me in awe was the prose. Lemon is the kind of lyrical writer you just don't see that often. I often found myself reading the same sentence over and over again, not because it was difficult to understand, but because it was just so damn beautiful. Lemon is a writer that will be on my automatic read list from here on out.

Man. How often do you get to read a book about a deeply imperfect 18-year-old girl trying to figure out how to take control of her own life, let alone two of them? For this reason alone, <i>Done Dirt Cheap</i> is something special. Tourmaline and Virginia are wildly different and, by rights, shouldn't be friends at all, but weird circumstances bring them together and their shared, awkward questing for control keeps them there, warring against the people and society who try to tell them what to be and demand that they hit certain markers and meet certain expectations. It's glorious to watch the girls struggle and regroup and try again, both together and alone, and gratifying that their endings aren't wrapped up too cleanly with little pink bows.

That said, the wonderful individuality of each girl and the way Lemon allows them their own struggles are so striking and precious that the book's overwhelming heteronormativity is even more disappointing than it would normally be in a YA novel. More specifically, each girl falls in deep, meaningful, lasting love literally the moment she spots the object of her affections, a turn of events which is so unconvincing that it really stands out in a novel as gritty and individualize as this one. I have no problem with romantic or sexual encounters in my YA novels, but the speed and intensity of these felt as if they had been dropped in from another, much more conventional story.

[This full review will be posted at my GoodReads -- link below -- a month before publication.]