Starters review

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Starters is a dystopian fiction book by Lisa Price. The book takes place after the spore wars, which utilized biological warfare by spreading disease inducing spore and wiping out anyone who was not vaccinated. Thus, almost all of the people aged 20-60 are dead and the kids and elders who got vaccinated first are left to make due with the remains of the war weary country. Callie is among the generation of kids who were able to be vaccinated, but living through the war was only the beginning to the rough road ahead of her of living on the street and finding shelter wherever she can. After the war, those in power made unjust laws prohibiting anyone under 19 to work and legalizing institutions which are a lot like glorified jails for kids. Callie is willing to do almost anything to keep herself, her brother Tyler, and her friend Michel from being put into one. However, with her brother sick and no money to help him, the marshals are not her only problem. Then, with her shelter being taken over and Tyler getting worse,Callie believes her hands are tied and goes to one of the only places which allows kids to work, Prime Destinations. It is also known as the body bank, and allows a customer to inhibit a persons body for a period of time while the donor falls into an unconscious state. Its legal on a technicality and its practices are not well known. However, their services to the donor may seem perfectly beneficial pitched or on paper as they say they will pamper you, make you look pretty, and then pay you to sleep. Although, after the fancy make over, the surgery to insert the consciousness transferring chip, and the first few trials, Callie starts to wonder how much of her life she will miss and how much is she really willing to. The pay is initially good, but with her unconscious, she can not properly care for Tyler. Then one night Callie finds her back in her body, living in a different life style. Her neurochip malfunctions leaving her back in her own body and her previous renters voice in her head audible during random intervals. As she becomes closer with the people she meets in Bel Air while pretending to be someone she is not, and she tries to figure out who the voice in her head is, she starts to uncover the true intentions of her renter, the true intentions of Prime Destinations and whether she's willing to risk her life to save herself from a living death.

I thought this book was pretty interesting, the plot moved at a pretty good pace and being the dystopian fiction fan that I am, I thought that the plot was pretty interesting. There were also some plot twists which caught me off guard and made the book even more interesting and hard to put down. I would say that the writing style itself was not bad. I think it did a good job getting the point across and since it is told from the point of a teenage girl, it makes sense that it would not include that many metaphors or other literary devices. Also, I think the author does a pretty good job of portraying Calle’s thought process and giving the reader a pretty good sense of her analytical personality as throughout the book she explains the things she notices and what that could mean. For example, when she first finds that she is in control of her own body, she tries to assess the situation, where she is at, who she is talking to and whether she should act like her renter. Also, I think the reader gets a good sense of Callie’s love and respect for her parents because she keeps referring to things they taught her throughout the book. Overall I would recommend because it kept me interested throughout the book and because of the twists which were included along the way. In addition, I would give it a 9/10 because again, it kept me interested, but it still was not one of the very best books that I have read.

- Annie