Unchanged (Unremembered #3) – Jessica Brody

Title: Unchanged (Unremembered #3) by Jessica Brody
Publishing Info: February 24, 2015 by Macmillan
Source: Received from the publisher for review purposes
Genres: Science Fiction, Young Adult
Find it on the web: Buy from Amazon // GoodreadsDate Completed: February 14, 2015
Related Posts: Unremembered (Unremembered #1), Unforgotten (Unremembered #2), A Week of Mondays

    After returning to the Diotech compound and undergoing an experimental new memory alteration, Seraphina is now a loyal, obedient servant to Dr. Alixter and the powerful company that created her. Happy and in love with Kaelen, another scientifically-enhanced human designed to be her perfect match, Sera’s history with a boy named Zen is just a distant memory from a rebellious past she longs to forget.
But as Sera and Kaelen embark on a nationwide tour to promote Diotech’s new product line—a collection of controversial genetic modifications available to the public—Sera’s mind starts to rebel. She can’t stop the memories of Zen from creeping back in.
As more secrets are revealed, more enemies are uncovered, and the reality of a Diotech-controlled world grows closer every day, Sera will have to choose where her true loyalties lie, but it’s a choice that may cost her everything she’s ever loved.

** This is a spoiler-free review for UNCHANGED but there may be spoilers for the first two books if you have not read them. Readers be warned! **

Thank you, Jessica Brody, for a great finish to this trilogy! It’s been so much fun reading this series and I’ve been absolutely impressed with how much it’s grown over time. I had the pleasure of interviewing Jessica for the Unchanged Blog Tour and what I thought was really interesting was that she said she sort of wrote each book as a stand-alone but each of them were connected and I really liked this concept! A lot of time went by in between picking up one book to the next since I read each one right around its pub date so it was actually really great to be able to pick up the next book and not feel totally lost because I couldn’t remember what happened previously. (UNCHANGED had a nice little refresher too.)

The overall concept of UNCHANGED was so interesting. It’s no spoiler to say that when the book opens, we sort of re-meet Sera… After all of the progress that she made in UNFORGOTTEN, she’s once again a slave to Diotech’s mission although she believes in it willingly. This realization and what it means for her (and Zen) is just heartbreaking but it was also so much fun to root for Sera the whole book to wake up and smell the coffee and to take down the man!

Naturally, this causes complications for the romance. (BIG ones.) Not only is Sera back in with Diotech, but she feels connected with her “print mate” Kaelen. At the same time, she still remembers Zen but is convinced he had brought her over to the dark side (the events that occurred in UNFORGOTTEN). I’ll admit there were times in UNREMEMBERED when I wasn’t quite convinced what was so great about Zen and then really started to like him in UNFORGOTTEN and I started to totally understand — the UNCHANGED sort of shattered those pieces! (In a good way?) It brought about SO much more emotion and I got incredibly invested in everything that was going on! It really helped bring out so many more sides of each character as well. We get to dig a lot deeper into the minds of Sera, Zen, Kaelen, and even Dr. A!

UNCHANGED was a thrilling conclusion to this series! There was a whole lot of action and lots of great developments that kept pushing the plot forward. I really loved getting to know the characters so much better in this book and it was definitely the one I was most invested in plot-wise and emotionally! The Unremembered Trilogy was so entertaining and I was so happy to read such a well-put together science fiction collection! Everything got so much more detailed in each book and I just really love how it all came together in the end.

“The View from Goodreads” is a featured section in my reviews that I decided to incorporate! I tend to update my Goodreads status a LOT when I read — reactions, feelings, notes — so I thought it would be fun to share the sort of “reading process”! All status updates are spoiler-free (no specific plot points will be revealed) but will contain reactions to certain pages and/or characters!

Sera // Character Obsessions: Diotech, Kaelen, being a good ExGen, the human side of things.
Gahhhh it was so hard to watch Sera in the grasp of Diotech again! Even more frustrating that she WANTED to be… but that also let the readers learn a lot more about her and who she is, deep down. It was very interesting!

Kept Me Hooked On: Science Fiction. I get pretty picky about science fiction books. The good ones are usually great and the ones I don’t get along with tend to really not work out for me. I’m so glad so many aspects of this trilogy really hit the spot!
Left Me Wanting More: Emotional connection. I actually felt the most emotion I had in this trilogy with UNCHANGED! But overall, I wish it had been there more in the first two books. UNCHANGED really played on the emotions so much more and I really got invested!

Addiction Rating
Read it!

This was a very entertaining trilogy and I think it’s a great series for people to pick up who aren’t as into science-fiction!

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(Click the cover to see my review!)