Blurb:
This fall, six new students are joining the junior class at the elite Darkwood Academy. But they aren’t your regular over-achieving teens. They’re DNA duplicates, and these “similars” are joining the class alongside their originals.
The Similars are all anyone can talk about. Who are they? What are the odds that all of them would be Darkwood students? And who is the madman who broke the law to create them? Emmaline Chance could care less. Her best friend, Oliver, died over the summer and it’s all she can do to get through each day without him. Then she comes face-to-heartbreaking-face with Levi, Oliver’s exact DNA copy and one of the Similars.
Emma wants nothing to do with the Similars, but she keeps getting pulled deeper into their world. She can’t escape the dark truths about them or her prestigious school. No one can be trusted, not even the boy she is falling for with Oliver’s face.
My Review:
“Six clones. One elite boarding school. Countless deadly secret.” The plot of the novel is very intimidating. It is quite new and refreshing.
The story is about an “accidental” experiment where DNA of six new born babies were taken (read: stolen) and used to make their clones. These clones (the Similars) were bought up on a man-made island by Augustus Gravelle. The Similars joined the same school as their originals (Darkwood Academy) which led to anti-similars and pro-similars group formation .
The story spoke of acceptance, friendship, love and loneliness in a beautiful way. The story was excellent and it unfolded in a very structured manner.
But there were a lot of drawbacks. The same facts were repeated over and over making it boring sometimes. (But it was also helpful a few times since you didn’t have to turn pages to understand references) On the other hand enough reasons or facts were not provided for important events.
The protagonist – Emmaline Chance was a really dumb character who did the all the correct things only because (a) she is the protagonist and (b) the author knows what she is supposed to do. Some wrong decisions made by a character makes it more realistic. Which was not the case with Emmaline.
The ending was abrupt and kept me hanging on several points. I can only wish that the novel has a sequel