ARC Review: Unremembered by Jessica Brody

Title: Unremembered (Unremembered #1)
Author: Jessica Brody
Pages: 320 pages
Acquired format: Paperback (ARC)
Publisher: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux (BYR)
Publication date: March 5th' 2013
Source: Received from publisher for an honest review (Thanks, Ksenia!)
Buy the book: Amazon / Barnes and Noble

When Freedom Airlines flight 121 went down over the Pacific Ocean, no one ever expected to find survivors. Which is why the sixteen-year-old girl discovered floating among the wreckage—alive—is making headlines across the globe.

Even more strange is that her body is miraculously unharmed and she has no memories of boarding the plane. She has no memories of her life before the crash. She has no memories period. No one knows how she survived. No one knows why she wasn’t on the passenger manifest. And no one can explain why her DNA and fingerprints can’t be found in a single database in the world.

Crippled by a world she doesn’t know, plagued by abilities she doesn’t understand, and haunted by a looming threat she can’t remember, Seraphina struggles to piece together her forgotten past and discover who she really is. But with every clue only comes more questions. And she’s running out of time to answer them.

Her only hope is a strangely alluring boy who claims to know her from before the crash. Who claims they were in love. But can she really trust him? And will he be able to protect her from the people who have been making her forget?

From popular young adult author Jessica Brody comes a compelling and suspenseful new sci-fi series, set in a world where science knows no boundaries, memories are manipulated, and true love can never be forgotten.

(Image and summary taken from Goodreads)

Review:

I can't help but compare these books to The Adoration of Jenna Fox and For Darkness Shows The Stars. Much like Adoration and For Darkness, there is a big question on how much of a human you are when all of your physicality is made in a laboratory. Or when all of you is prosthetic, even your insides. We saw how it was kept a secret from Jenna that she was like a living mannequin plus organs because everyone else thought it was dangerous because according to them, she "isn't human" and we see this clearly in For Darkness too. We see these Luddites put themselves up on a pedestal since they consider themselves "untouched" by scientific re-engineering, and when Kai came back and Elliot realized what he and his fleet were, she was somewhat appalled and even asked herself if they were still human. The concept of it is as fresh as it as tricky to work with. Since we don't have that much books on these topics (that I know of), it surely provides a fresh new idea to the market. But in taking such a scientific and logical reasoning, it would be very tricky to add romance in it because it can kind of mess up the whole dynamics of it. So basically, we're taking two very different colors in the hopes of making a new one.

*EXTREME SPOILERS*

*LIKE, REALLY EXTREME*

*REALLY, I JUST GAVE A SUMMARY OF THE BOOK*

Unremembered really got the whole fresh, new idea with Violet/Sera being uncommon and all, and I especially liked the buildup of leading towards the whole "big revelation" of who or what she really was, I never could have guessed it was this kind of book. It really left me thinking hard. We have this extremely lucky girl who survives a very fatal airplane crash, she's not on the passenger list, she speaks foreign languages fluently, is extremely beautiful and not to mention, she proved/disproved (I'm not quite sure) a mathematical theory. WOWZA! Dream girl, right? Yeah, save for the fact that she's not from this time era and she's not exactly knit in the womb of a mother. She's a lab experiment gone wrong (or extremely right. I'm still not sure. It's very confusing) the scientists down at Future Evil Scientists Company (not the exact name) said "Hey let's make a human!" And everybody was just like "Yeah! Good idea!" And they're like. "Give it a brain that's REALLY smart and can remember everything. Oh, and make it a sixteen year old girl, too. Can't go wrong with females in puberty!" (paraphrased) But even though they try really hard to conceal her, locking her up in a house surrounded with a wall, as we all know, teenagers always find a way and she meets this guy and they converse and sadly (or happily. It's really not stated), the human-like experiment starts developing emotions like love and confusion and the urge to rebel, like all teenagers do. The scientists then know about this secret rendezvous and decide to end her. Then she runs away with the guy. To the past. Like, Romeo and Juliet because they believed they were soul mates and/or just really likes Shakespeare, but then something goes wrong, and they end up a couple of hundred years after their desired date. Then because Evil Future Corporation in the future and evil, they follow her and her paramour in the hopes of capturing some teenage booty. Then the rest is history (pun intended). While I really do love those elements, I'm not quite sure if Ms. Brody was able to incorporate them all smoothly. I mean, we're talking cold, hard science here and suddenly, there's the whole notion of soul-mates. For me, it didn't mix well. Kind of like oil and water. Almost there, but not quite. I feel that it would have been better without the whole Romeo and Juliet thing, but then again, it was the whole backbone of the story, because this wouldn't have happened if they didn't read Shakespeare that time. And it may seem shallow, but that singular factor kind of rocked my boat. It was a good storyline, no doubt about that. I'm just worried about how the branches were made. It seemed very risky putting in something like that and it may have worked for other books, but sadly it did not work in this one. While I do love all books and tend to read with no bias and usually try to understand every angle, I'm sad to say that I didn't quite catch where this one was headed to. It seemed a little like a firecracker. It was a little all over the place, jumping from one pragmatic to the other.

All in all though, this book is an entertaining read, especially at the beginning, where all the mystery was. Keep up the the good work, Miss Brody! :)

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