Usually a sci-fi book that slips this much into girly love interest territory loses it for me, but this one pulled it off beautifully.
Daisy can’t die. She is one of 21 kids who died on a bus crash and were brought back to life using an experimental drug called ‘revive’. Because of this, she has a pretty crooked view on death, but all that changes when she dies again and is forced to move across the country so no one will know she didn’t really die.
In a lot of ways, this book read like a very normal high school experience book. Girl has to got a new school, girl finds new friend, girl falls for cute boy in English class. However, the undercurrent of the mysterious government agency and Daisy’s past with revive never quite got swept under the rug.
The normal girl school stuff was some of the best I have read lately. Daisy’s relationship with Matt was believable and progressed naturally while her friendship with Aubrey had that perfect over eager excitedness of a new friendship. When it becomes clear that Aubrey has a secret, the appropriate amount of time passes before you figure it out and when you are told what it is, you die just a little.
Anything else is too spoilerish, but trust me, this book takes you through the emotions!
Then you have Daisy and her government agent fake parents. When they’re alone, things revolve more around the drug, which has become a normal part of their lives. However, strange things are happening within the program and the three of them are right in the middle of it. Mason, her fake dad, senses something is wrong, but it’s Daisy and her revived friend Megan who really start digging into figuring out what is going on.
I loved the idea of revive and what it would really mean if there was a drug that, with only a few limitations, could bring people back to life. Daisy is reckless because she has no reason to be afraid of death, and who wouldn’t be? How much more stupid stuff would we all do if we knew there was a reset button? And if revive went into widespread use, what would that do to the population? If anything, they didn’t go into the moral complications of the drug far enough for me.
Overall though, it was a really good book; exciting, emotional, and fun.