Beta

Author:  Rachel Cohn

Series:  Annex, Book 1

Year:  2012

Publisher: Hyperion

Pages: 331

Goodreads Summary:

Elysia is created in a laboratory, born as a sixteen-year-old girl, an empty vessel with no life experience to draw from. She is a Beta, an experimental model of a teenage clone. She was replicated from another teenage girl, who had to die in order for Elysia to exist.

Elysia's purpose is to serve the inhabitants of Demesne, an island paradise for the wealthiest people on earth. Everything about Demesne is bioengineered for perfection. Even the air induces a strange, euphoric high, which only the island's workers-soulless clones like Elysia-are immune to.

At first, Elysia's life is idyllic and pampered. But she soon sees that Demesne's human residents, who should want for nothing, yearn. But for what, exactly? She also comes to realize that beneath the island's flawless exterior, there is an under­current of discontent among Demesne's worker clones. She knows she is soulless and cannot feel and should not care-so why are overpowering sensations cloud­ing Elysia's mind?

If anyone discovers that Elysia isn't the unfeeling clone she must pretend to be, she will suffer a fate too terrible to imagine. When her one chance at happi­ness is ripped away with breathtaking cruelty, emotions she's always had but never understood are unleashed. As rage, terror, and desire threaten to overwhelm her, Elysia must find the will to survive.

 I had a couple of misfires on starting this book. I had a really hard time getting into this book. For some reason I wasn't quite feeling it for Elysia. Demesne was an odd sort of dystopian world that I couldn't quite understand and I couldn't say right in my head without thinking Shakespeare. Plus, I have a hard time identifying with the clones as main characters bit. But then stings started picking up and I started getting into the story and I found myself enjoying the book and liking Elysia. I was even pulling for her and hoping that she'd find a way to join in the rebellion and break free. 

Overall, Beta wasn't the greatest dystopian book I've read but I am intrigued enough to pick up the rest of the series and find out what  happens.