Origin

Origin

Jessica Khoury

Pages: 394

Publisher: Razorbill

Format: *signed* ARC

Source: Jessica Khoury

Age Group: Young Adult

Date Published: September 4, 2012

Pia has grown up in a secret laboratory hidden deep in the Amazon rain forest. She was raised by a team of scientists who have created her to be the start of a new immortal race. But on the night of her seventeenth birthday, Pia discovers a hole in the electric fence that surrounds her sterile home--and sneaks outside the compound for the first time in her life.
Free in the jungle, Pia meets Eio, a boy from a nearby village. Together, they embark on a race against time to discover the truth about Pia's origin--a truth with deadly consequences that will change their lives forever.
Origin is a beautifully told, shocking new way to look at an age-old desire: to live forever, no matter the cost.

Wow, guys. This book was fantastic. I just saw a bunch of like low reviews for it, and reconsidered what I thought.... I still think it's awesome. A lot of people hated it 'cause they expected to, but I had expected to love it, and did. I loved the way it was written and the characters and the imagery (heh. I HAVE learned things in AP English!) is so vivid. I could picture Little Cam and her party dress and the Skittles cake! It was all so beautiful and bright and brilliant. I loved Pia with a passion and Eio was actually totally adorable for a "savage."

So, Pia is immortal and lives with these scientists in the jungle, at a research center type place called Little Cam. They created Pia, and she is perfect. They also wouldn't let her know anything about the outside world, so all she knows is Little Cam. For an extremely sheltered girl, she was actually really normal. Everything she did made sense, and she was cute and smart and normal. Not even all weird homeschool kid. She was cool. Then a new scientist comes (Harriet Fields) and tells Pia about things, and opens her mind up to the outside world. On Pia 17th birthday, she finally leaves the compound, and meets Eio. With him, she learns the true history of her heritage, and what it means to know people outside. It was beautiful, and suspenseful, and heart wrenching, and wonderful! And the ending, my goodness, the ending was perfect. The most perfect ending EVER. I loved it. A lot.

Like I said earlier, Pia is the perfect heroine. She's so real and awesome, and I really liked her. I think the story was so compelling because she was the narrator. Her thoughts were perfect, and all of her actions were perfect, and everything she did made complete sense. I felt for her near the end of the book, but at the same time I was yelling "Go Pia!" If you read the book, you'd understand :) I also really liked Dr. Fields. She was funny and has this old-fashioned, almost early 1900's sense of humor (I'm not really sure what this says about her, this book is set in today's times). She made me laugh, and she was so candid about everything. Eio was a really awesome hero. He was cute and sweet, and very jungle boy (which shouldn't have been sexy, but it kind of was). I loved his fierce protectiveness of Pia, and his adoptive sister Ami (they all have 3 letter names...).

That cover is really cool. I've really gotten to love it, considering I have like 4 bookmarks with it on them :) I use them in like all of my books!

This book was amazing, and I highly recommend it. 5 mustaches for this one!