Review: Perfected by Kate Jarvik Birch

Perfected by Kate Jarvik Birch
Date Published: 1st July 2014
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Amazon    Book Depository 

Goodreads Summary

Perfection comes at a price. As soon as the government passed legislation allowing humans to be genetically engineered and sold as pets, the rich and powerful rushed to own beautiful girls like Ella. Trained from birth to be graceful, demure, and above all, perfect, these “family companions” enter their masters’ homes prepared to live a life of idle luxury. Ella is happy with her new role as playmate for a congressman’s bubbly young daughter, but she doesn’t expect Penn, the congressman’s handsome and rebellious son. He’s the only person who sees beyond the perfect exterior to the girl within. Falling for him goes against every rule she knows…and the freedom she finds with him is intoxicating. But when Ella is kidnapped and thrust into the dark underworld lurking beneath her pampered life, she’s faced with an unthinkable choice. Because the only thing more dangerous than staying with Penn’s family is leaving…and if she’s unsuccessful, she’ll face a fate far worse than death. For fans of Keira Cass’s Selection series and Lauren DeStefano’s Chemical Garden series, Perfected is a chilling look at what it means to be human, and a stunning celebration of the power of love to set us free, wrapped in a glamorous—and dangerous—bow.

 A VERY HAPPY RELEASE DATE TO PERFECTED! And a massive thank you to Entangled Teen for providing me this book for a review!

A new legislation is passed where owning a pet is taken to another level. Instead of having a fluffy puppy or a kitten to cuddle you to bed you can own a teenage girl who was bred to be perfect in all physical aspects.

The idea for this book seemed really out of the box and original. I was pleasantly surprised how the idea developed but there was nothing shocking about the plot or where it leads. There were no cliff-hangers, no surprises, nothing that would have actually made this book outstanding.

Number 8 or Ella as she’s later is named is an engineered pet, raised in a kennel to be obedient to her new master. As soon as I read this description of the main character my first thought was obviously these beautiful girls will be used as sex play toys by middle aged guys. I suspect that most of them were brought just for that. However Ella was brought to be a playmate for a bubbly little girl and her family; which doesn’t seem so bad.

“I was bred to be the perfect pet”.

“I was bred to willingly put my owner’s happiness before my own.” 

Taken out of context these two sentences seriously look like the worst starts for a porno. I mean come on! Willingly putting my owners happiness before my own. I get that they were bred to be like that and to think like this but I don’t think I would be able to do that. Not in a million years. I wouldn’t care if my “owner” was happy and none of my pets flipping do! To be fair they are cats and just care about food and where to crap but that is beside the point…

Okay now back to the book.

Ella’s new family already had a pet, a pet that was given away for being “ill”. However it’s not hard to figure out what actually happened to the last pet, with the congressmen’s wife not being particularly happy with Ella being there and with how the congressman acts towards Ella.

After she is brought her world changes, she needs to learn more things and more importantly learn what it really is like to be a pet. But is this the life that Ella can live with?

I don’t think the ending and the love story is at all surprising. This book was a pleasant read but it’s not at all amazing.   

ARC Review: The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E. Smith

The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E. Smith
Release Date: April 15th 2014
Publisher: Headline (UK)
Source: Netgalley
Pre-Order: Amazon | Book Depository

Goodreads Summary

Lucy and Owen meet somewhere between the tenth and eleventh floors of a New York City apartment building, on an elevator rendered useless by a citywide blackout. After they're rescued, they spend a single night together, wandering the darkened streets and marveling at the rare appearance of stars above Manhattan. But once the power is restored, so is reality. Lucy soon moves to Edinburgh with her parents, while Owen heads out west with his father. Lucy and Owen's relationship plays out across the globe as they stay in touch through postcards, occasional e-mails, and -- finally -- a reunion in the city where they first met.

A love story that started off in an elevator, under the stars on a roof and got mapped out over America and Europe with postcards saying Wish You Were Here.

“He was just a boy on a roof. She was just a girl in an elevator.”

Lucy and Owen meet somewhere between the tenth and eleventh floors of a New York City apartment building during a citywide blackout. After being rescued they spent a night together in the agonising heat and darkened streets looking up at the stars above Manhattan. However as the lights come back so does the reality and soon Lucy moves over to Edinburgh and Owen and his father take the road and travel across the country. Not seeing each other for months with hardly any contact but a few postcards and emails.

What I love the most about this book is that this isn’t one of those romance orientated teen books where everything is perfect and happy. Lucy and Owen have the space to grow apart and breath. They were able to grow into their own characters and be able to tell their own story rather than being a couple in a book that’s always together joined at the hip. I didn’t particularly understand why Owen and Lucy had to both be so sociably awkward; I loved Lucy and how much of a bookworm she was and I liked Owen liking his own space after his mother dying but it felt like they were massive loners and just didn’t want to talk to anyone which is just silly.

“Nine months ago, he’d met a girl in an elevator and she’s been on his mind ever since.”

Jennifer managed to create a relationship between two people who were separated by thousands of miles and yet still managed to think about each other wherever they went; proving that distance is only mapped out and can be overcome. This book was really sweet and cute but it was in such great doses that I didn’t feel gross after reading it.

The writing is amazing! I can’t even express how much I love Jennifer’s writing. This isn’t one of those soppy boring teenage stories.

This is the first book that I’ve read by Jennifer E. Smith so I wasn’t too sure what to expect but I saw that John Green was a fan of this particular book so I was pretty much sold.

Note that these quotes have been taken from an uncorrected proof and may be subject to change