Review of This Mortal Coil

So. I’m not the most science-y person out there. I’m a bit of a hypochondriac. And I’m not always pro-love triangle. Though this book was chock-full of YA cliches AND creepy viruses, I also enjoyed it quite a bit! Check out my review of This Mortal Coil below

This Mortal Coil by Emily Suvada

Published on November 7, 2017 by Simon Pulse

I received an ARC from Book Expo.

Synopsis (adapted from Goodreads): Catarina Agatta is a hacker. In Cat’s world, people are implanted with technology to recode their DNA, allowing them to change their bodies in any way they want. Cat’s father is Dr. Lachlan Agatta, a legendary geneticist who may be the last hope for defeating a plague that has brought humanity to the brink of extinction.

During the outbreak, Lachlan was kidnapped by a shadowy organization called Cartaxus, leaving Cat to survive the last two years on her own. When Cole, a Cartaxus soldier, arrives with news that her father has been killed, Cat’s instincts tell her it’s just another Cartaxus lie. But Cole also brings a message: before Lachlan died, he managed to create a vaccine, and Cole needs Cat’s help to release it and save the human race. Now Cat must decide who she can trust: The soldier with secrets of his own? The father who made her promise to hide from Cartaxus at all costs? In a world where nature itself can be rewritten, how much can she even trust herself?

Review of This Mortal Coil

If you follow me on Goodreads you might know that I resolved not to read this and then changed my mind … and (spoiler) actually liked this quite a bit.

Let’s talk about all the things that might make you love (or dislike) this book:

I thought the cover was gorgeous, until I started the book and realized that this red thing is the cloud left by a human body exploding in the last stages of a deadly virus. If that totally squicks you out, I have good news: the virus stuff is gross at the beginning, but then isn’t a big part of the story.

Next, there’s the love triangle. I’m just putting that out there, because I know some people have a strict no-triangle policy. There’s definitely one here, and it’s the totally cliche YA kind where the girl has a childhood love who seems out of the picture and then a new guy shows up and no, she totally does not love him but … whoops! They’re making out! Wait, who’s that? Guy #1? What’s he doing here?!

I was totally okay with the triangle only because guy #1 called her “Princess.” (Yes, sort of sarcastically, but still.) I was rooting for guy #2, who had been scientifically enhanced by her father to protect her and had a (in 80s movies terms) The-Bodyguard-meets-The-Terminator kind of appeal.

The science was cool (at least to my non-science-y self). There’s the virus, there’s computer coding stuff and nanotechnology. It was well-explained enough for me to follow.

I also thought this book had SO many YA tropes and yet …. for me, they worked. A main character who’s an odd genius with serious daddy issues. The love triangle. The sort-of forbidden love with the bodyguard. A virus. A mysterious missing coder.

There was a Big Twist at the end that I totally saw coming (only because I’ve read similar twists before). I often think that Big Twists drive too much of a book’s plot and I definitely think that was the case here. But because this twist took the book more away from exploding bodies and more toward other stuff, I had no problem with it here.

If you like sci-fi and don’t mind triangles, I say you should give this a try!