False Sight by Dan Krokos

Summary (from Goodreads):

All Miranda wants is a normal life. She's determined to move past the horrible truth of her origin as a clone so she can enjoy time with her boyfriend, Peter, and the rest of her friends at school. But Miranda quickly learns that there's no such thing as normal - not for a girl who was raised to be a weapon. When one of her teammates turns rogue, it begins a war that puts the world in jeopardy. Now Miranda must follow her instincts - not her heart - in order to save everything she's fought so hard to keep. With the image of a terrible future seared into her mind, what will she have to sacrifice to protect the people she loves?

Dan Krokos's sequel to the tour de force False Memory is a mind-blowing thriller with high-octane action that will leave readers begging for the final book in this bold and powerful trilogy.

Review:

To start with, this is not the cover of my copy of the book. Granted, I have an ARC. I guess the finished copy just looks a little different. I wasn’t expecting to like this one as much as the first. The first one had so many twists and turns and surprises. And this one had a sort of cliché, boring beginning. I started to read it about five different times. I almost decided to never read it because I’m so tired of the whole “wanting to be normal” thing. But, I’m so glad I kept reading it because that part is really only like the first couple of chapters.

After the lame beginning, there is plenty of twists and turns. There’s lots of violence, captures, fight scenes, and death. And just when I had a feeling I knew where this all was going, the book became a lot more sci-fi than I ever predicted. There’s other worlds and alien monsters to fight with. There’s dead friends’ memories and underground tunnels.

A lot of things get explained in this book too. The clones, the character’s strengths, the creators, all of it has an explanation. And none of it is what I was predicting. There are so many answers. The book actually read a lot more like a final installment than a book 2. I’m sort of confused as to what’s left to accomplish in book 3, but I guess Krokos just has a never-ending supply of twists in his pocket that he can just pull from as he chooses.

I was never a big fan of Krokos’ romance. He has action and suspense down like a pro, but I just never shipped Miranda with anyone and all of the scenes with Peter and Noah just felt kind of fake and strange. I guess I liked the romance a little bit better in this book because there wasn’t as much of it. And something that happens with Noah certainly made it more interesting. Also, this is a little random, but in more than one fight scene, it was mentioned that Miranda’s hair was severed. I just find this to an odd phrase. For starters, when someone pulls at your hair, it hurts, and Miranda didn’t seem to notice. And second, does this need to happen more than once with the weird wording?

The other weird thing that got to me was the amount of clone fighting. Wouldn’t it be terrifying and strange to have to fight yourself? I kind of feel like the characters of this book just accepted certain things without thinking them too weird. Should I really be more weirded out than the characters were?

All in all though, I loved the new sci-fi elements. I loved the plot twists, the suspense and the action. I enjoyed being in Miranda’s head again (even though I had to share it with someone else…) I tolerated the romance a little more than before. I hated the beginning chapters, but thankfully they were over with real fast. I’m not sure the characters were adequately weirded out by crazy events. But all in all, I was rather impressed. This gets an 8/10 from me.