Brave New Girl

Brave New Girl
by Rachel Vincent

This is the first in a series, it's a young adult dystopian novel.  I like reading dystopian novels as they are imaginative making a whole new world, a different way that the world could be.  

In this first book, you meet Dahlia 16.  She is one of five thousand clones that all look alike.   That is the way her world works.  There are large numbers of clones that are made.  There are no individuals, there are no people made like the old days.  That is antiqued and not efficient.  Mass-producing clones is the way.

One day Dahlia 16 is trapped in an elevator and that changes everything.  She meets Trigger 17.  She isn't supposed to talk to him, but she breaks the rules and does.  After that she can't stop thinking about him.  If she's caught, she will be considered flawed.  Which is very bad, because if she is flawed, then so are her 4,999 incidentals, who will all be recalled to be destroyed.

I ended up picking the second one in this series from the library, bringing it home, and then realizing it was a series.  Luckily I was able to find the first in the series at another local library.  

This was a quick read for me, after I read this one I couldn't wait to pick up the second.  I wanted Dahlia 16 and Trigger 17 to be able to be together, but their world was so different from what I'm used too.  All the clones.  The belief that if something is wrong with one of the clones, they all had to die.  

Strange New Girl is the second one is this series.

This one follows Dahlia 16 and Trigger 17 as they have escaped the city.  They have realized that the rest of the world is not like where they grew up.  They come from a clone farm that is mass producing servants for the elite. 

After Dahlia's 4,999 clones are recalled, she finds out she still has one remaining clone on the outside.  Her duplicate, who should not exists, is Whitney Whitmore, a rich, popular teenager who has a show that details her everyday life.  Whitney has no idea she is a clone.

I enjoyed the second book in the series more than the first, I'm not sure if it's by then I was just so into their world, or if it was the book itself.  I was rooting for Dahlia.  The clone aspect was intriguing.  And them trying to keep Dahlia hidden since no one was supposed to know that Whitney was a clone was interesting.  Whitney herself grows from a spoiled, rich brat, to somebody who cares about others: the clones.

This was such a fun series to read!  I read both of these books quite quickly as they were hard to put down.  I am eagerly awaiting a third book, if the author decides to write one!