Book: Beta (#1)
Author: Rachel Cohn
Site: http://www.rachelcohn.com/
Category: Young Adult, Sci-Fi/Fantasy
[Note: ARC c/o BEA! Book will officially be available on October 16, 2012]
My thoughts...
Summary: Elysia is an experimental teenage clone, born as a sixteen year old girl with no life experience to draw from. She was replicated from a dead teenager and created to serve the inhabitants of Demesne, an island paradise for the wealthiest people on earth. Everything about Demesne is bioengineered for perfection - even the air. But soon Elysia realizes that Demensne is flawed and there is discontent among the clones. She knows she is soulless and cannot feel—so why are overpowering sensations clouding her mind? If this is discovered, she will suffer a fate too terrible to imagine. (Adapted from Goodreads)
The good: The only good thing about this book was the idea behind it. I hadn't read anything like this before and was really intrigued by where the author could go with it. The idea of creating clones and trying to have this genetically engineered utopia where these clones act as.. I didn't even know what to expect. Would these clones be adopted by people to become part of their family, as servants, etc? I thought that Elysia realizing she did feel things and might have a soul after all had SO much potential.
The bad: Honestly? Just about everything else. I felt like the main character Elysia was written really inconsistently and in a way that just dumbed her down. So much of her dialogue is spent describing the different guys she meets in excruciating detail (over and over again), not to mention an obsession with sex (which she likes to refer to as the "mighty mighty" - ugh!). The whole pace of the book was super slow too and then within the last 50 pages or so the author hits you with like 5 different WTF twists. One of the twists was particularly hard to stomach and I certainly don't want to imply that YA books shouldn't be dark but this felt unnecessary. Plus there were a lot of plot holes. Like why did they start cloning people? Who was the first clone and what were the circumstances? What was the purpose of genetically engineering everything? Basically - how did they get here? Almost none of that is explained. So that on top of very unlikeable characters (the secondary characters consisted of a bunch of rich brats who like to get high) just didn't make for a good read in my opinion.
Do I recommend?: I hate writing bad reviews and I really do wish I had more positive things to say but in the end, I didn't think the story was executed well.
Happy reading!
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