[Book Review] Replica

Replica by Lauren Oliver

3/5

You can read this a total of three ways, but I really think that if you’re going to read this, you should start with Gemma’s pov.

SPOILER REVIEW

I received an arc copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley.

A YA Science fiction novel about clones. Bring it on.

The novel is a unique one, I’ll give Oliver that. Start the novel on one side and you’ll be reading from Lyra’s point of view, but start it on the other side and you’ll be reading from Gemma’s pov. You can read one pov and then the other or you can read a chapter of each until you reach the middle.

Personally, I started with Lyra’s pov and then, because my arc was only of Lyra’s side I listened to the rest of the novel via audiobook.

I really enjoyed Lyra’s pov and was thinking that the novel would be a solid 4 stars, then I got to Gemma’s pov and everything collapsed. Who is this whiny teenage girl? Gemma is an overprotected and soft teen. She has been shielded from everything in life by her parents which leads to the natural thing, her wanting to break out of her shell. Gemma and her best friend April have been planning a trip for ages and Gemma manages to convince her parents to let her go, which is great, you go girl! But the plan falls apart when her parents suddenly decide she can’t go.

Naturally, she runs away from home with the school’s ‘Purvey Pete’ with no plan other than she needs to go to Haven. Smart, right? Wrong. This girl is nuts.

And on the other hand we have Lyra. A replica, or so we thought.

Basically after reading Lyra’s pov it got pretty obvious. Lyra thought she was a replica, but wasn’t. Gemma thought she was “normal” but is really a replica. It got too obvious, too quickly.

I found Lyra’s storyline much more interesting. A facility called Haven, on a lone island. Breeding clones left right and centre sign me up. The kids laving in the facility were being experimented on and they didn’t even know it. Lyra had made friends with some of the medical experiment that she saw on a regular basis, like Squeeze Me. This really showed just how little she understood about her circumstances and how much trouble she was really in.

As for the layout of the novel, it sounded cool and is what initially intrigued me about the book. It made me want to pick up the novel, but the layout was lost on me. There was no need to have two different povs, it would have worked better with one.