Welcome to the U.K. where GEMs, otherwise known as clones are held up as perfection and the regular folks are Blemished, forced to work menial tasks and serve the beautiful ones. The story enters into a great, original world and you really empathize with the main character, Mina's trials. Even their reproductive rights are compromised as Blemished, which really contributes into the whole grim feel of the world. The different rules and regulations that are put on normal humans even makes it stand out. In fact, the only real issue I had with the story is that occasionally the dialogue would come off very stiff and some of the scenes tended to jump too much.
***SPOILER ALERT***
Murder-Troll stirs up trouble #1: Sebastian seems like your regular good guy in a sea of perfectly vicious GEMs. He stands out when he's kind to Mina even though she's a Blem. Likewise, with her being unused to that kind of attention, she naturally finds herself drawn to this pretty boy. However, interaction between the two sects is strictly forbidden and their teacher Murgatroyd lurks in the corner, interrupting any chance they have together. First at school the teacher stops them from interacting and then when they go on a pseudo date, Murder-Troll gets all up in their rear view mirror.
Murder-Troll stirs up trouble #2: Mina disregards the stigma against her and Sebastian and begins meeting up with him after hours. Even though she's got feelings for Daniel, she doesn't want to pursue them because her friend Angela liked him first. Welp, of course in a highly regulated society like this, her midnight excursions with the purty GEM boy get noticed. By good ol' creeper Murgatroyd too. In order to teach Mina a lesson, she cuts off her hair in front of the class. But this action sparks a reaction in Daniel, who's been falling for Mina the whole time. And he makes a dumb decision to trash Murder-Troll's house.
Murder-Troll stirs up trouble #3: Due to Daniel and Mina's ill advised foray into becoming taggers, Murgatroyd takes revenge the easy way, by setting the Enforcers, aka cops, on them. Blems who commit a crime like that get strung up on Sundays and they're forced to run. After a weird side trip to Uncanny Valley with Sebastian's GEM family in their farmhouse on the outskirts, they're back on the lam again. Because in this world, teenage rebelliousness=death.
The world was unique and the story itself was really interesting. I love what was done with this dystopian universe. Apart from the characters sometimes coming off as flat/unrealistic, it was a cool foray into dystopia with a splash of Scottish near the end.
Rating: 3
*I received this book for review purposes
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