By Kat Zhang, published by HarperCollins Children’s Books

This is a love story. But it is not a romance.

Imagine that you have two minds, sharing one body. You and your other self are closer than twins, better than friends. You have known each other forever. Then imagine that people like you are hated and feared. That the government want to hunt you down and tear out your second soul, separating you from the person you love most in the world. Now meet Eva and Addie. They don’t have to imagine.

The book is set in a future version of the Americas, where everybody is born with two souls living inside their bodies. Soon, between the age of five and ten, one soul will fade from existence, leaving the other one dominant. However, if the souls don’t ‘settle’, the government find out and track that ‘hybrid’ down and they are taken away; never to be seen again. When Eva and Addie, two souls who have been pretending to have been settling for three years now, find other hybrids like them, the result is trouble. Soon, Eva/Addie, Lissa/Hally and Ryan/Devon find themselves captured by the government and taken away to a Hospital where they are told they will be cured of being a hybrid. But as Eva and Addie investigate into this suspicious place, they uncover dark, dark secrets kept from the hybrid children and the whole of America… can they escape before either Eva or Addie is ripped out of their body?

Just from the Blurb, written above in italics, got me excited about this book. That and the cover looked seriously cool, so I started reading this, after receiving the proof in a goodie bag. And my guess was right, this book really was seriously cool! It’s so gripping and captivating, and a great story line. The characters were really well developed and like-able, and there were lots of narrative hooks that pulled me into the book and kept me reading. It reminded me very much of the HIS DARK MATERIALS series, what with the two souls in one body being similar to the people in Philip Pullmans’ books having a Dæmon like a second soul, and being taken away to the institution(his dark materials)/hospital(What’s left of Me), to be separated from their second soul, the person that they love more than anything in the world. 

It’s a brilliant book that will be enjoyed by Adult readers and YA readers alike, I really loved it and can’t wait for the next installment in the ‘Hybrid Series’!