An original concept that didn’t leave me disappointed

Origin

By: Jessica Khoury

Genre: YA, light sci-fi

Rating: PG

Coffee Beans: 3.5

Spoilers: None

First Line: “I’m told that the day I was born, Uncle Paolo held me against his white lab coat and whispered, ‘She is perfect.’ Sixteen years later, they’re still repeating the word.”

Favorite Line: I did have one, and I flagged it, but for some reason, my Nook (Newt) didn’t save it.

Cover Appeal: Pretty intriguing

Instalove Factor: A little, but it’s more like it grew quickly

Personal Recommendation: Read it

Publisher’s Summary:

The jungle hides a girl who cannot die.

An electrifying action-romance that's as thoughtful as it is tragic.

Pia has grown up in a secret laboratory hidden deep in the Amazon rain forest. She was raised by a team of scientists who have created her to be the start of a new immortal race. But on the night of her seventeenth birthday, Pia discovers a hole in the electric fence that surrounds her sterile home--and sneaks outside the compound for the first time in her life.

Free in the jungle, Pia meets Eio, a boy from a nearby village. Together, they embark on a race against time to discover the truth about Pia's origin--a truth with deadly consequences that will change their lives forever.

Origin is a beautifully told, shocking new way to look at an age-old desire: to live forever, no matter the cost.

My Review:

Hahaha! Okay, sorry for that opening, but I just watched the trailer for the book and saw what they think Eio looks like. He’s like 26 in that clip! He’s almost 18 in the book. LOL.

Moving on…

I’d seen this book cover around, and it’s pretty darn intriguing. A jungle scene, with the cutout of a woman’s figure. The summary grabbed my attention even more. When my friend read it and told me I had to do the same, I was sold.

I was really surprised with the concept of this story. I mean, how original and brilliant is that? I was also happy to see that it was a standalone book. (I’m getting kind of tired of seemingly ALL YA books being turned into series. Present company excluded, of course).

The book is a fair length, about 300 pages on Newt. And it was good. But for some reason, it kind of dragged for me in the begging. It felt like forever for me to the halfway mark. Once there, though, the rest sprinted by.

The thing I loved most about this book were the characters. They came to life and were all so completely different. Her cold mother, the vivacious Mrs. Fields, her bi-polar Uncle Paolo, her meek father. And the gentle yet fierce Eio and conflicted yet driven Pia. I was impressed with the amount of active characters Khoury had in her story. I was able to keep them all straight, though, and they all had distinct personalities and purposes.

Pia lives in a converted greenhouse, and while that would completely AWESOME to have, they are in the middle of the Amazon jungle and I had a hard time believing that she wasn’t boiling to death all the time. I did believe, though, the subtle personality and thought process change that Pia was going through as she analyzed her desires and purposes in life. The introduction of Mrs. Field’s and Eio shook up her world, challenged everything she believed in and thought was right. And she made wrong decisions when it was important for her to make the right ones. But that made her human, something she’d been struggling with.

Plenty of action, and secrets, and disturbing Wickam tests, I really enjoyed this book that examined the motivation of the human heart with our sometimes, not so wholesome desires.

--Me