REVIEW: This Mortal Coil by Emily Suvada - Paige

Rating: 

Genre: YA Sci-Fi/Dystopian

Pages: 425

Amazon

Author

Synopsis:

In this gripping debut novel, seventeen-year-old Cat must use her gene-hacking skills to decode her late father’s message concealing a vaccine to a horrifying plague.

Catarina Agatta is a hacker. She can cripple mainframes and crash through firewalls, but that’s not what makes her special. In Cat’s world, people are implanted with technology to recode their DNA, allowing them to change their bodies in any way they want. And Cat happens to be a gene-hacking genius.

That’s no surprise, since Cat’s father is Dr. Lachlan Agatta, a legendary geneticist who may be the last hope for defeating a plague that has brought humanity to the brink of extinction. But during the outbreak, Lachlan was kidnapped by a shadowy organization called Cartaxus, leaving Cat to survive the last two years on her own.

When a Cartaxus soldier, Cole, arrives with news that her father has been killed, Cat’s instincts tell her it’s just another Cartaxus lie. But Cole also brings a message: before Lachlan died, he managed to create a vaccine, and Cole needs Cat’s help to release it and save the human race.

Now Cat must decide who she can trust: The soldier with secrets of his own? The father who made her promise to hide from Cartaxus at all costs? In a world where nature itself can be rewritten, how much can she even trust herself? – Amazon.com

Let’s start with the fact that when I read this was going to be a dystopian I was like “YAS GIVE ME THIS BOOK”. I’ve been wanting to read this book since I saw it was slated to come out and so I was pumped to finally read it. I have to say that this was one of my favorite reads of 2017 and my husband even buddy read it with me (meaning we fought over who would get to read the book in an hour of downtime we had). I thought the plot was fantastically done and the pacing was on point. The characters were all very well developed and while the book had a somewhat love triangle in it it was not a typical YA love triangle and it was fantastically written to not annoy the crap out of me. The book as a whole was wonderfully well wrote and I think this book could be the next Hunger Games or Divergent.

The only issues I had with the book is that I thought the science was a bit hit or miss (I do recognize that Emily is infinitely smarter than me in math and science but sometimes there is a bit of suspension of belief with sci-fi books and I didn’t see how some of these things could come to be… but then again my great grandmother said the same thing about men landing on the moon so anything is possible!) and I wanted to know more about the world. The world building for the most part was fantastic, but I think that there could have been more.

Verdict: I am excited to see the sequel whenever it comes out! I will be first in line to Barnes and Noble when it’s on the shelves and I won’t be afraid to cry like a baby when I get my copy. I loved this book and if you loved the hunger games or divergent then you’ll love this book.