Review by Booklist Review
West's debut novel is an ambitious endeavor, an attempt to examine society in a world where every child is engineered to purpose, touch is forbidden, and the most important currency anyone can have is reputation. The story itself is relatively domestic, largely following Schuyler and Madeleine Burroughs and the ripples of their effect on other people. Schuyler is an icon, wealthy enough to get away with almost anything; Madeleine is a social climber. Their perfectly matched children are starting to question their roles in the social dynamic. Intermixed with the stories of the wealthy and powerful are those of ancillary characters like Tam, whose goal is to be in the same rarefied strata as Schuyler himself. Underlying the world of wealth and privilege are menials, also engineered, then trained for servitude--and they are, unsurprisingly, more complex than those at the top acknowledge. For all that the thematic choices err a little on the heavy-handed side, the story of a family that exists without any real intimate contact, in which the children genuinely were chosen as accessories to the parents, is an absorbing, if unsettling, read.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
West sets her smart but flawed dystopian debut in a heavily surveilled society obsessed with image, status, and social media. A series of vignettes from myriad viewpoints spotlight how the members of the high-status Burroughs family--husband Schuyler, wife Madeleine, and daughters Reyna and Naomi--become the targets of admiration and envy, and how the attention gradually affects them. Teenage Tam plans to feed off Schuyler's influence by wooing Reyna; Jake, an artificially created menial, develops a forbidden attraction to Madeleine; and couple Tonia and Eduardo's decision to have a designer baby involves the Burroughs' connections. Everyone wants to use the Burroughs, and the family fractures under the pressure. West's crisp, introspective tale succeeds in highlighting the negative side of popularity and power, with her society, a near-future reflection of the present, relying on genetic engineering and highly curated online presences to create picture-perfect self-images. The technique of revisiting scenes and conversations from multiple perspectives creates the sensation of spiraling closer and closer to a central point, which unfortunately never becomes fully clear as events fizzle and plot threads are left dangling. West delivers plenty of creepy, weird, and insightful ideas about privacy, power, and performance for readers to chew on, she just doesn't quite stick the landing. Agent: Robbie Guillory, Underline Literary. (Aug)
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Review by Library Journal Review
DEBUT In West's debut novel, children are created only in laboratories, either to become a prized piece of thoughtfully engineered beauty and intelligence to increase the online status of their parents or to become a menial worker with an expected life span of 25 years. But not everyone is comfortable with the status quo, and it's exhausting to always carefully curate an online image. Maybe it's time for change? West's presentation of the thoughts and questions centering around Menials--from the secretive way they are created to the common misbelief that they have no recognizable feelings--fosters an interesting discussion about what qualities, characteristics, or behaviors indicate personhood. West does not address basic functional aspects of the setting, leaving a good deal of room for interpretation, but this makes portions of the story difficult to connect with, although repeating scenes from different perspectives allows for a better understanding of key characters. VERDICT With its slower pace and the many concepts it introduces and leaves unresolved, West's debut novel will appeal to readers who appreciate philosophical fiction and fans of Scott Westerfeld's "Uglies" and "Impostors" series.--Stacey Hayman
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