DualedPublisher: Random House, 2013Genre: YA DystopiaThe city of Kersh is a safe haven, but the price of safety is high. Everyone has a genetic Alternate—a twin raised by another family—and citizens must prove their worth by eliminating their Alts before their twentieth birthday. Survival means advanced schooling, a good job, marriage—life.
Fifteen-year-old West Grayer has trained as a fighter, preparing for the day when her assignment arrives and she will have one month to hunt down and kill her Alt. But then a tragic misstep shakes West’s confidence. Stricken with grief and guilt, she’s no longer certain that she’s the best version of herself, the version worthy of a future. If she is to have any chance of winning, she must stop running not only from her Alt, but also from love . . . though both have the power to destroy her.
Kersh is one of the last safe haven
cities in the world. To maintain this status The Board has created a system to
eliminate weak ones and breed the rest into soldiers who can defend their city.
For this, every person is born with a twin, an alternate who they only meet
once they’re activated to kill each other. After an alternate finishes a
mission, he becomes a complete and has access to privileges the Idles, people
who haven’t been activated to kill their alts, don’t have.
All
that remains of West Grayer’s family is her brother, the rest failed their
missions. But West has been training for the day they activate her, and she is
confident she’ll do anything to survive. But then her brother dies in a
accident, and she spirals into a dark cloud of grief. West thinks there’s
nothing worth fighting for anymore, but her childhood friend is not about to
let her give up.
Elsie
Chapman’s Dualed is full of action and hard choices, as West searches for
a reason to survive.
West is your typical kickass girl.
She’s a fighter with a fiery temper and will,
but she’s also horribly stubborn and this leads her to make some
unreasonable decisions. Like become a Striker, a killer for hire, and
terminating other alts but not hers. She also shuts out Chord, the only person
left in her life who can help her. I just couldn’t understand that. Her alt was
smarter than her in that aspect.
Overall,
I didn’t connect with West, and as a reader who puts characters above all else,
this was an issue for me. I couldn’t get involved in the world of Dualed because of her.
There’s a tiny bit of romance with
Chord, but like I mentioned before West shuts him out. This means we don’t get
much of it. Still, it was nice seeing him come back again and again, trying to
reason with her. Helping her every step of the way in however way he could. It
was very frustrating to read those parts. West keeps pushing him away, hurting
him on purpose so that he stays away. She says she’s doing it because she loves
him and wants him to be safe, but I just never felt the spark from her side of
things.
The Board is the real threat, yet for
all the illegal stuff West did, she never even got close to being in trouble. I
wanted to see more injustice by the Board or something. I know this is only the
first book, and maybe in others the Board will be more involved. But the ending
pretty much wrapped it all up and I don’t think I’ll be up to round two with
West.
*Arc copy
provided by the publisher via Netgalley*
Favorite Quotes:
~West
and Chord~
His eyes narrow, and he leans forward,
getting closer to me. “And who is it you think I am, West Grayer?”
“Someone who’s not supposed to die
yet,” I say, scowling at him.
A flicker of a smile on his lips. Not
quite his own, but nearly. “If this is your way of telling me you’d miss me,
I’ll take it.”
