What's Left of Me by Kat Zhang The mechanical staccato of the heart monitor is a sound I've never heard in person, but I could hear it in this book. Not that a character in this book was lying prone on hospital sheets, but that it was the book itself that was the patient. Steady timing, a hopeful heartbeat was the beginning of the story in which Addie and Eva were first introduced. The hook is that Addie and Eva are two persons occupying the same body, a commonality for young children in this society. However Eva and Addie are now sixteen and Eva should have faded to black long ago with Addie taking reign as the sole controller of the body they were both born into. If they are revealed as both still being present in one body, then they will be apprehended by the hybrid-fearing government. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep... This is a good back cover grab for attention, but it was the story's execution that became the face of this book's executor. Many variables could have been altered that could have masked the negative symptoms of this book such as boredom and impatience, leading to eventual skimming of the pages. The plot is as restricted as its protagonist Eva, locked in a body that doesn't move for her just as the reader is hooked into a novel that is unmoving and unresponsive despite the readers persisting wish for something to happen. The apparent stalemate is due to our protagonist whose imprisoned three times over. Eva cannot take charge of her body's actions leaving that job to Addie a weak willed soul who somehow became the dominant one. That is the first way Eva is restricted from participating in the plot, along with the reader. There is hope in the new girl at school, Halley. Halley is described as strange, and she lives up to her description by taking Addie/Eva to her house and with the help of her brother succeeds in drugging Addie/Eva in wild hopes of getting Eva to emerge and take control. But alas, the reader and Eva are once again denied the opportunity for development. Further, it is because of Halley that they are discovered as being a hybrid and are swiftly put away by the Feds. Locked away, they'll be submitted to testing, sharing their room with others and (for the reader) pages of boring board games with the other children. Beep...beep... beeeeeeeeeeep... I am confident that this could have been a mediocre read, or better, but due to failure in character and plot development the story flat lines long before the anticlimactic ending, let alone the sequel. If I hadn't been reading it on a kindle, this book surely would have aggressively met the wall. If To Kill a Mockingbird is a book then this one is a flyer; an advertisement for something that may interest you without any real product of credibility.
