Series: Lifelike

Synopsis:

On a floating junkyard beneath a radiation sky, a deadly secret lies buried in the scrap.

Eve isn’t looking for secrets—she’s too busy looking over her shoulder. The robot gladiator she’s just spent six months building has been reduced to a smoking wreck, and the only thing keeping her Grandpa from the grave was the fistful of credits she just lost to the bookies. To top it off, she’s discovered she can destroy electronics with the power of her mind, and the puritanical Brotherhood are building a coffin her size. If she’s ever had a worse day, Eve can’t remember it.

But when Eve discovers the ruins of an android boy named Ezekiel in the scrap pile she calls home, her entire world comes crashing down. With her best friend Lemon Fresh and her robotic conscience, Cricket, in tow, she and Ezekiel will trek across deserts of irradiated glass, infiltrate towering megacities and scour the graveyard of humanity’s greatest folly to save the ones Eve loves, and learn the dark secrets of her past.

Even if those secrets were better off staying buried.

Review:

“Leave it alone,” Cricket warned. 
Eve’s eyebrows hit her hairline. “Crick, are you smoked? Can you imagine how much scratch this thing is worth?” 
“We got no business with tech that red,” the little bot growled. 
“What’s the prob?” Lemon asked. “He looks armless to me.” 
Eve glanced at the severed shoulder. Up at her friend’s grin. “You’re awful, Lemon.”

Lol ummmmm. I don’t even know where to begin after an ending like that, lol WOW. I mean UNFORTUNATELY one of the regular patrons at my library spoiled one of the biggest reveals for me a few weeks ago (which really was crappy, like wtf lol) but STILL. I feel like it was just one thing after the other for the last 25% of the book like I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO BELIEVE ANYMORE, WHAT IS HAPPENING!?

“So. You wanna play?” the skinny boy asked again. Lemon looked the kid in the eye. Fingered the stolen creds in her cargos.
“All right, you little snots,” she muttered. “Let’s dance.” 
“What’s your name?” Stinky asked as Lemon pulled up a chair. The girl cracked her knuckles. Picking up the cards, she fanned them out over the table, swept them up into a riffle shuffle, dovetailed them into a perfect stack and set them down before the wide-eyed children. She dropped her stiks on the table and smiled. 
“You can call me Daddy.”

The first thing I want to mention about this book is that I am obsessed with its characters. Lemon, especially, is hilarious. Eve was BA and I loved the friendship between her and her bestest. Ezekiel was….intriguing. I don’t know my full thoughts on him and the relationship there just yet. I’ll be excited to see how certain things progress in DEV1AT3 though, that’s for sure. Cricket and Kaiser though…*sobs* perfection. Two cutest bots on the block.

Overall this book was both weirdly not what I expected and exactly what I expected. I was thinking it was going to be a little more sci-fi when really it was a lot more dystopian. Kristoff painted a picture of a world that was ugly AF if I’m being honest. All of that machinery and not one blade of green grass or clean water was mentioned. The thought it horrifying. After I got a better grip on the world building though, everything flowed better for me. A lot of really horribly visceral things happened but since I’ve read The Illuminae Files and Aurora Rising I had kind of expected it. The writing, even though it was solely his instead of also with Kaufman’s, was very familiar to me and I appreciated the consistency of it. What I thought was super interesting was that even though it’s mentioned that this was “part Romeo and Juliet, part Terminator” that this is like 100% an Anastasia parallel. Like….that could kind of be a spoiler I guess (?) but…It’s still true haha. Once I realized it I was like OMG YES. SO MANY CONNECTIONS! I cannot wait to see what ends up happening in DEV1AT3, wow.

“We can’t just leave her in there alone, Freckles. You know that.” 
“We lied to her. She hates us now.” 
“It’s simple to love someone on the days that are easy. But you find out what your love is made of on the days that are hard.” The lifelike held out his hand. “And we still love her,” he said simply. “Don’t we?”

This final part I think I’ll put under a spoiler tag so I can talk some things out…
View Spoiler »OKAY. So many thoughts. First of all, the part that was spoiled for me was the fact that Ana was actually a lifelike. So that’s really fucking dumb bc if I hadn’t known that, the scene where she was shot saving Lemon would have such a bigger impact on me. HOWEVER. I still was crazy surprised when I found out that Lemon was the actual “deviate” and that the real Ana’s body was still technically alive and out there somewhere. I’m dying to find out how that factors in with Ezekiel. But also kind of happy. Even though I don’t want Eve to go psycho and team up with Gabriel, I don’t want her to be with Zeke. That felt too weird, too forced. Esp now that she knows she wasn’t even really Ana at all. So awesomely messed up. « Hide Spoiler

“Stronger together, together forever, right?”