A review by idgetfay
This Mortal Coil by Emily Suvada

5.0

I’m so hard to please with books lately, I almost gave this 4 stars until I realized I didn’t have anything bad to say about it. Normally I reserve 5 stars for books I’ll buy and wait in line for the sequel but I don’t really do that anymore now that I live somewhere with a freakin’ awesome library system. Anyway, this checked so many boxes for me. I’m a sucker for a gorgeous cover, probably what attracted me to the book in the first place. I love a plucky female protagonist, I love a good sizzly romance that starts up just a smidgen too quickly to be realistic. I do have a slight complaint about this one though because it seems like maybe if you’re programmed to protect someone your love for them isn’t completely under your control? But that’s part of the quandaries this book brings up. I love that the author touched on a lot of moral and philosophical questions with technology and research. I’m not sure YA is the place to explore those questions effectively, but she respects her readers enough to not shy away from them. While this definitely fell outside the realm of realistic, she took great pains to make sure things made some sort of sense within the structure she created, without filling the book with jargon. The balance, for me, was spot on. This author did her research. Well. Sort of. I was thrilled to discover the book mostly took place around where I grew up, the Black Hills. It’s gorgeous there, and being able to picture it in my mind so vividly because of my familiarity with it was a thrill, but also made it easy for me to nitpick. It’s not that remote, and the mountains aren’t that steep, and, how is there a mile wasteland around Homestake? There’s like a huge pit there and it’s surrounded by mountains. Surely to even know Homestake was there she had to Google enough to know that. But maybe I misinterpreted the description. And I mean it’s the future, so things change. But I digress. I saw two major twists coming, but not until 300 pages into the book, so props for keeping me guessing for that long. Basically this is the best YA I’ve read in a really long time. My biggest complaint is the psycho intelligence of our villain. It’s a bit too much for one man, and his agenda is clearly misguided. He’s got Thanos syndrome. But other than that, a fast-paced and intelligent read.