LitPick Review
West Grayer lives in the city of Kersh, where everyone lives with an Alternate, a genetic twin. Alternates, or Alts, look exactly alike and have many similar personality and physical traits, but they are raised in different families in different areas of Kersh. At a certain age, pairs of Alts are activated, meaning they have one month to kill each other. This method is the government's way of finding the best people to protect the city. In the previous book, Dualed, West was able to defeat her Alt. In Divided, she is living the life of a Complete, someone who has defeated their Alt, until she is tracked down by a Board member, named Sabian.
Sabian offers her a deal: if she becomes a striker for three contracts, then he will ensure that her own children will not have Alts and they will never have to go through the terror of hiding from and trying to kill their Alts. Strikers are people who kill another person's Alt for experience or money--some kind of reward. West was previously a striker in the first book, but it was not a method favored by many people (it is comparable to the black market in our society). West takes the deal, but it means keeping secrets from loved ones. As West begins to fulfill her contracts, she discovers other secrets that were meant to stay hidden, secrets that if revealed, could either turn the city into chaos, cost her her life, of free the city. With many twists and turns, you never really know when the book has reached its max point.
Opinion:
In my opinion, this book is an interesting and engaging story. One of the things I liked about this book is that you never really know when the action stops. There is a part when West is about to fulfill one of her contracts but then she does something that made me think "Oh, she's in trouble." Then there was another part where her contracts are fulfilled and you think that she can get some time to relax, and then another problem barges its way into her life, just like that. Then the book moves into her fixing the problem and that's another scene in itself. The continuous action twists you around and pushes you down different paths of the story you never would've thought about.
Also, I liked the concept of twins that Elsie Chapman uses. There are plenty of twin based stories out there, or books that have twin characters in them, and they are all similar in some ways. The twins were separated at birth, then reunited; the twins were separated at birth, then try to kill each other; the twins are competing for power, the twins are magically connected somehow and are super powerful together, etc, etc. But this is a twist on the typical twins story, making it a situation of survival of the fittest, which is an interesting concept when you think about it.
However, with all the twists and turns of the story, many of the details, weren't really detailed enough. Kersh is a new place , kind of like a modern day city, but I just couldn't get the feel for it. The setting, the fights, and the characters were all described in some kind of a vague fashion, which made it hard for me to connect to the story.
All in all, if you like futuristic books, then you just might like this one. It has the action to keep you on your toes, the romance that is not a lot, but enough to keep you satisfied that "they are a couple", however, personally, I'm glad the author did not focus on the boy-girl relationship. This book has a great inner conflict, and the fight against the government that will make you think as you read.
