Dualed

Author: Elsie Chapman
Goodreads Rating: 3.50
Pages: 304
Format: ARC from NYCC12

 You or your Alt? Only one will survive.

The city of Kersh is a safe haven, but the price of safety is high. Everyone has a genetic Alternate—a twin raised by another family—and citizens must prove their worth by eliminating their Alts before their twentieth birthday. Survival means advanced schooling, a good job, marriage—life.

Fifteen-year-old West Grayer has trained as a fighter, preparing for the day when her assignment arrives and she will have one month to hunt down and kill her Alt. But then a tragic misstep shakes West’s confidence. Stricken with grief and guilt, she’s no longer certain that she’s the best version of herself, the version worthy of a future. If she is to have any chance of winning, she must stop running not only from her Alt, but also from love . . . though both have the power to destroy her.

Elsie Chapman's suspenseful YA debut weaves unexpected romance into a novel full of fast-paced action and thought-provoking philosophy. When the story ends, discussions will begin about this future society where every adult is a murderer and every child knows there is another out there who just might be better.
The city of Kersh is a safe haven, but the price of safety is high. Everyone has a genetic Alternate—a twin raised by another family—and citizens must prove their worth by eliminating their Alts before their twentieth birthday. Survival means advanced schooling, a good job, marriage—life.
Fifteen-year-old West Grayer has trained as a fighter, preparing for the day when her assignment arrives and she will have one month to hunt down and kill her Alt. But then a tragic misstep shakes West’s confidence. Stricken with grief and guilt, she’s no longer certain that she’s the best version of herself, the version worthy of a future. If she is to have any chance of winning, she must stop running not only from her Alt, but also from love . . . though both have the power to destroy her.
Elsie Chapman's suspenseful YA debut weaves unexpected romance into a novel full of fast-paced action and thought-provoking philosophy. When the story ends, discussions will begin about this future society where every adult is a murderer and every child knows there is another out there who just might be better.

My excitement for Dualed was hardly containable when I first found out the book was, you know, a book. I requested on Netgalley and, shocking, got denied. I was still a new blogger and my stats weren’t quite what they are today. Then I found out from Elsie that they were going to have copies of the book at NYCC12, and I knew that I had to go and I had to get one. And I did. I got one, and MAN am I glad that I did. While this book didn’t live up to my every expectation, I still really liked it despite reader friends telling me that it wasn’t up to par.

I really loved the plot of this book. It was original and fresh and that is something that the book market needs. Clever books like this should happen more. I was reminded a bit of The Hunger Games the way that there are wealthier parts of town that have the money to access better training and Strikers, people that will kill your Alt for you. This being similar to how in THG, Districts One and Two would breed champions because they had more access to money. I liked the statement that this made about how wealth can seemingly buy you everything, almost. I wish that Chapman had gone a little more into detail about how the world got to being in this situation. There was a sort of cliffnotes version, but I’m hoping that book two will provide more details.

What I liked least was West. I think that she is one of the chief reasons that people had a problem with the book. She seemed ambivalent towards her life and almost bipolar about everything. When we are first introduced to her, she is this hard, go get em type of girl, and then something tragic happens and she seems to give up on life. She seems almost robotic and like she doesn’t have any feelings. The one time I felt that she was a real person was at the end when she started to realize that she had made all of these mistakes and she started to panic about what type of an impact this was going to have on her fight to survive. I wanted her to survive, but she just seemed to be devoid of all emotion.

I also wasn’t a fan of the side Striker plotline. I felt that it really came out of nowhere and that it sort of seemed out of character for her, but I don’t think that I can properly judge her character. She was all over the place with this Striker job which was cool, but at the same time, she was still a kid and that was a little unexpected. Her reasoning behind doing it was that it would help her train but I didn’t really see how it helped her in the battle against her Alt. I was also really confused that people didn’t acknowledge Strikers, but she never really seemed to hide that she was one. It was a little contradictory, but I rolled with it.

I know it seems like I had a lot of complaints about this book, but in all honestly I really liked it. I liked that romance was not the central plot line for once, that sort of took a back seat to West’s fight for survival. I really liked Chord and how he wanted to help her out despite her attempts to push him away. I felt bad for both of them having to watch as their families were slowly destroyed by this “Alt” program. In fact, it reminded me a little of Sparta and how only the strong survived there too. I’m really looking forward to the next book in this series because while there wasn’t really a cliff hanger, there is very clearly more to the story.

The Courts Decision: