I must say, however, that the "dead girl" phenomena kind of disturbs me. It seems so anti-girl power, to have all these dead girls floating around. But I can see the appeal to teens, who may be curious about death and use that as a way to explore the concept.
I'd heard bad things about this book. The main male character was a jerk and treated the female character badly. The female character was weak. The story was creepy. I'd heard so many bad things, in fact, that I didn't order this book until a patron specifically requested it. By then it was already a popular book and I relented (even though the reviews at Goodreads are TERRIBLE).
To me, this book is in a similar vein to Twilight; the female character isn't particularly strong and, yes, the male character is kind of a creepy jerk, but the tension between the two keeps your nose in the book long after you should be in bed.
Nora meets Patch when they are given new seating assignments in Biology class. Patch unnerves Nora and she finds him cocky and kind of a jerk. After the new seating assignment, he seems to pop up wherever she is and she starts getting worried. Is he stalking her? How does he know so much about her? Nora eventually starts to feel as if she's being watched, especially in her home and believes Patch is responsible. She starts to believe that he's trying to kill her.
She's not wrong.
It is hard to go into too much detail about this book without giving the whole story line away. But I stand by my original statement: it is bad, but hard to put down.
Now this book, this book I really enjoyed. I thought the concept was really unique: what if someone was practically dead but there was a teeny, tiny part of them still alive, and we could build them a new body and put that teeny, tiny part inside and make them new.
Jenna wakes up one day knowing she is Jenna and not much else. She has few memories and the few she does have are a bit fuzzy.
Jenna lives in a world where there are lots of antibiotic resistant bacteria and a bad virus wiped out a good portion of the world's population about 25 years prior. As a result, the government stepped in and created a point system; once you've used up your 100 points it doesn't matter how rich or smart or powerful you are, your medical treatment stops. Every medical intervention has a point value, obviously the bigger the issue the bigger the point value.
Jenna's dad is a biotechnology genius and Jenna was in an accident that used up all her points. And yet, here she is, alive, with not so much as a scratch.
As Jenna learns more about her world, and re-learns things that were lost during her coma, she starts asking hard questions and pushing her parents to the brink. They are stressed to the max and her grandmother, whom Jenna has very fond memories of, will hardly have anything to do with her. Jenna feels like something is off, but she doesn't know exactly what until she accidentally cuts herself and, instead of bleeding, sees blue nanogel inside her body.
This book evokes about a million questions about ethics. In fact, I'm considering using it for this summer's book club since the theme is "beneath the surface." This book would fit in perfectly.
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