Replica

Author: Jenna Black
Goodreads Rating: 3.64
Pages: 368
Format: ARC from ALA13

Sixteen-year-old Nadia Lake comes from a high-class Executive family in the Corporate States. Her marriage has been arranged with the most powerful family in her state, which means she lives a life of privilege but also of public scrutiny, followed everywhere by photographers, every detail of her private life tabloid fodder. But her future is assured, as long as she can maintain her flawless public image — no easy feat when your betrothed is a notorious playboy.
Nathan Hayes is the heir of Paxco — controller of the former state of New York, and creator of human replication technology, science that every state and every country in the world would kill to have. Though Nadia and Nate aren’t in love, they’ve grown up close, and they (and the world) are happy enough with their match.
Until Nate turns up dead, and as far as everyone knows, Nadia was the last person to see him alive.
When the new Nate wakes up in the replication tanks, he knows he must have died, but with a memory that only reaches to his last memory backup, he doesn’t know what killed him. Together, Nadia and Nate must discover what really happened without revealing the secrets that those who run their world would kill to protect.

I'm finding it a little bit difficult to find out where were start on this review because be feelings while reading this were such a roller coaster. I picked this one up after 3 in a row DNF'd (and that might be because I was blown away by Crown of Midnight), but I had hope because pretty much from the start this book grabbed me.

I did feel that the writing was disjointed. I was pulled into the book right away, with Nadia and Nate and what happened, but eventually the writing felt disjointed and difficult to follow. This book also followed a third person POV, so the fact that their names were Nate and Nadia tended to get confusing at some points.

About halfway through the book, I started to get fed up with Nadia and Nate. Both of them fell into this terrible little cliche and their whole stance on life changed in the 3 days that this book takes place over. Everything that they were established to be was thrown out the window as the book moves toward the climax which happens with less than 100 pages left in the book.

Like I said, I felt like a roller coaster while reading this book, I start off really liking it, and eventually moved to not even wanting to go further because of the characters, to actually somewhat enjoying it at the end. I really did like the climax and falling action even if everything did come way too easy for our characters.

I do wish there had been more about how New York became Paxo rather than a line in passing that the state had fallen on hard economic times and that the Empire State Building was no longer called such. There is still so much potential for this book that I'm hoping the second book does a better job of utilizing it.

The Courts Decision: