Book Review: Starters
Starters by Lissa Price
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Publication Date: March 13, 2012
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Callie lost her parents when the Spore Wars wiped out everyone between the ages of twenty and sixty. She and her little brother, Tyler, go on the run, living as squatters with their friend Michael and fighting off renegades who would kill them for a cookie. Callie’s only hope is Prime Destinations, a disturbing place in Beverly Hills run by a mysterious figure known as the Old Man.
He hires teens to rent their bodies to Enders–seniors who want to be young again. Callie, desperate for the money that will keep her, Tyler, and Michael alive, agrees to be a donor. But the neurochip they place in Callie’s head malfunctions and she wakes up in the life of her renter, living in her mansion, driving her cars, and going out with a senator’s grandson. It feels almost like a fairy tale, until Callie discovers that her renter intends to do more than party–and that Prime Destinations’ plans are more evil than Callie could ever have imagined. . . .
Teen dystopia novels are everywhere these days and they start to run together after a while. I think that Starters was original enough to stand out in the crowd. Callie was a strong, smart, likeable heroine. She is, of course, the center of a love triangle. I really didn’t feel like there was much chemistry with either boy – Michael or Blake. And I think I can say without giving anything away that a certain point Callie remaining interested in Blake got pretty creepy. Luckily, the romance wasn’t a huge part of the book.
The central plot involving Callie trying to figure out what Prime Destinations was up to kept me guessing and took several unexpected turns. The ending was haunting and left me eagerly anticipating the next book in the series.
There are two e-book prequels for this series, Portrait of a Starter and Portrait of a Marshal, that I’m assuming add some more details to the world-building. These books are $1.99 each and the first is only 15 pages long and the second is only 30 pages long. I find it ridiculous to have to pay four dollars for 45 pages of content.
Even though the e-book prequel situation irritates me and I probably won’t buy them (and if I do, I’ll be grumbly about it), I’m really looking forward to the sequel, Enders, which is scheduled to be released in December.
Buy this book at:
Amazon
(I received this book courtesy of the Amazon Vine program.)
