Published April 2012 Hardie Grant Egmont
From the publisher:
Daisy has died five times. She's a test subject for a government super drug called Revive, which brings people back from the dead. Each time she is revived, Daisy has to move cities and change her identity to avoid suspicion. Daisy has always gotten a thrill out of cheating death, but her latest move has come with unexpected complications: a new best friend, and a very cute new crush who is taking a special interest in her... As Daisy's attachment to her new home grows, she discovers secrets that could tear her world apart. And the more she learns, the more she feels like a lowly pawn in a sinister game. When the stakes are life and death, someone is going to get hurt.
Now, I should tell you that I usually have some kind of plan with my reading, I work out on advance what I will read, make sure I have a decent mix of age ranges, genres, try and keep within a month of publication...blah blah blah....that plane went out the window when this book came in...it skipped the queue. I just had to read it straight away. Why? Because Cat;s book Forgotten from last year was an absolute highlight for me, so I couldn't wait to get started on this.
We all know that drug companies undergo
rigorous testing before new drugs are put on the market. We also know that humans can volunteer themselves
for drug trials, so testing can be done on humans. Imagine if a new wonder drug
was tested on humans without their consent.
This is what happened to Daisy. Daisy
died in a bus crash when she was a young girl. Minutes later she was
Revived. She is one of 21 survivors of a
school bus crash. She survived because
of a new drug called Revive. Daisy has died 5 times in 15 years and each time
she dies her family have to move to another town and take on new identities.
The moving has never really bothered
Daisy, she tries hard to make herself invisible, and she doesn’t make friends,
until she meets Audrey McKean and her brother Matt McKean. In Audrey she find
her first real friend, and in Matt she finds love. Matt is the first person Daisy has ever
trusted enough to tell about her life.
As she explains things to him, she starts to realise the moral
implications of what happened all of those years ago, and becomes aware that
there is something sinister going on within the agency. Something even her parents (special agents)
Mason and Cassie aren’t aware of. There
were 21 survivors from the bus crash, 21 case studies, so when Daisy stumbles
across Case 22, she knows that something is going on, and it has something to
do with her.
This book reminded me of What Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen
and Stealing Heaven by Elizabeth
Scott. Not so much the drug testing, government cover-up,
sociopath evil genius part, but the constant re-location and the challenges of making friends and fitting in, in a new town and then knowing you’ll just have
to leave. In each of
these books the main character decides it would be nice to stop and just call
one place home. And in all of these
books, there is a similar reason as to why they want to stop moving… a boy, not
the sole reason, but a major factor.
I
am a big fan of authors like Sarah Dessen, Elizabeth Scott ,Deb Caletti and Cat Patrick,
because I think they fill a big gap in books for teenage girls. Their books are girly enough (boys,
friendship, parents, school) so that reluctant (reader) girls will pick them up, but
they also have a lot of substance to them.
Who will like this
book: Girls age 15+
Read it if you like: Sarah Dessen and Elizabeth Scott
Read it if you like: Sarah Dessen and Elizabeth Scott
No comments:
Post a Comment