I was fortunate enough to receive an ARC of this from edelweiss and the publishers, but it languished on my iPad until the New Year as I was trying to catch up with some other reading. At least reading it now it is published means I can tell people about it and they don’t have to wait ages to get their hands on a copy.
Lauren Oliver has been one of those writers that I’ve found excellent when she gets it right. Here, she is pretty close to doing that.
Initially the ‘flip’ element of the story might seem like a gimmick. We are given two versions of the same event, though the differences in the narratives are just enough to not make it seem like we’re reading exactly the same story. In Lyra and Gemma we have two intriguing narrators. Each girl gets to experience something new in this novel as they go on a journey of self-discovery with a difference.
The key premise of the story focuses on the Haven institute, a mysterious place that is doing something with replicas (i.e. human clones) though nobody is entirely sure what. When the institute is blown up, Lyra and one of the male replicas escape. They meet Gemma and Jake, two teenagers who have more of a stake in this story than they realise. During our encounter with these teenagers we – as they do – learn more about what Haven was and just how it links to the girls’ stories.
I don’t want to give too much away, as this is definitely a book to go into knowing no more than you’re told at the outset. Suffice to say, though I wanted to know more about the background of the institute and would have liked to see what happened afterwards, this was a clever read that only revealed itself to be so as you draw near the end of the experience.
Personally, I’m looking forward to seeing what students I teach make of this – and I’m curious to know whether reading a physical copy of this so you can flick between the stories makes any difference to the experience.