Title: This Mortal Coil (This Mortal Coil #1)
by Emily SuvadaPublishing Info: November 7, 2017 by Simon & Schuster, Simon Pulse
Source: Scribd
Genres: Young Adult, Science Fiction, Dystopian
Date Completed: January 15, 2019
Find it on the web: Buy from Amazon // Goodreads
When a lone soldier, Cole, arrives with news of Lachlan Agatta's death, all hope seems lost for Catarina. Her father was the world's leading geneticist, and humanity's best hope of beating a devastating virus. Then, hidden beneath Cole's genehacked enhancements she finds a message of hope: Lachlan created a vaccine.
Only she can find and decrypt it, if she can unravel the clues he left for her. The closer she gets, the more she finds herself at risk from Cartaxus, a shadowy organization with a stranglehold on the world's genetic tech. But it's too late to turn back.
There are three billion lives at stake, two people who can save them, and one final secret that Cat must unlock. A secret that will change everything.
I read this book based off of some glowing reviews from Instagram friends, usually people whose tastes I align with, but THIS MORTAL COIL fell a little flat for me.
I’ve been really into sci-fi lately but I notice a trend with my sci-fi: I’ve been enjoying books involving space or time travel/alternate universes. Sci-fi books with other themes need just a bit more to hold my attention and THIS MORTAL COIL had a little bit of a wow factor but it also lost me in some places.
The big buzz about this book was the series of plot twists, some bigger than others. I was really impressed with the biggest twist, which I didn’t see coming until it was already on top of us. It was a really neat concept and well-executed! I liked that the book as well as the twist had a little something different — a step outside of some of the overused plots. Emily Suvada brought some elements to this book that were unique and creative, and I always love being surprised!
Where I wasn’t as thrilled was the characters. This is a problem I seem to have with a lot of dystopian-type settings. Everything is so life-or-death that everyone is so serious all the time and all of the characters fall a little flat, lacking some of the better depth that I’ve connected with in other books. Aside from being serious and determined, I didn’t really feel a lot from any of the characters. I love banter and just about every group has some sort of comic relief and I just hoped for more of a witty character or someone who lightened things up every once in a while. I can’t count on a romance bringing lightness to a book. I guess it works in some situations and for some readers, but I’d love to see more well-rounded personalities from everyone.
While the ending of the book was interesting, I’m not sure I want to continue the series. The characters just didn’t do it for me and it made me not as interested in their stories, despite the captivating plot. Unrelated, the audiobook narrator was…. weird. She had some mispronunciations for some super common words and it was just plain bizarre that no one corrected her or fixed it. When you pronounce “vaccine” oddly (emphasis on the first syllable), don’t know how to say “capillaries”, and don’t know how to pronounce “saline”… it just really threw me off it was just weird. (Maybe people do pronounce these differently? I’ve never heard it though.)
Kept Me Hooked On: Interesting sci-fi concepts. I was definitely interested by the plot and there were some good twists and clever concepts here.
Left Me Wanting More: Character connection. The characters were mostly blah to me. It was too dystopian/fast-paced and not enough time developing the actual characters for me.
Addiction Rating
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I personally won’t be continuing the series and didn’t really connect with this one, but so many people absolutely loved it! I’d say check out some other reviews or just give it a try! It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t great enough for me to really want to continue.
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