ARC Review: Mila 2.0 by Debra Driza

 

Author: Debra Driza

Series: Mila 2.0

Pages: 480

Publisher: Katherine Tegan Books

Amazon Pre-order: Mila 2.0

Release Date: 13^th March 2013

Synopsis. (Goodreads)

Mila 2.0 is the first book in an electrifying sci-fi thriller series about a teenage girl who discovers that she is an experiment in artificial intelligence.

Mila was never meant to learn the truth about her identity. She was a girl living with her mother in a small Minnesota town. She was supposed to forget her past —that she was built in a secret computer science lab and programmed to do things real people would never do.

Now she has no choice but to run—from the dangerous operatives who want her terminated because she knows too much and from a mysterious group that wants to capture her alive and unlock her advanced technology. However, what Mila’s becoming is beyond anyone’s imagination, including her own, and it just might save her life.

Mila 2.0 is Debra Driza’s bold debut and the first book in a Bourne Identity–style trilogy that combines heart-pounding action with a riveting exploration of what it really means to be human. Fans of I Am Number Four will love Mila for who she is and what she longs to be—and a cliffhanger ending will leave them breathlessly awaiting the sequel.

Review: 3 ½ out of 5 stars

The gorgeous eye-catching cover of Mila 2.0 is what initially captured my attention of this book and the intriguing synopsis had me sold; I have only recently started to embrace the Sci-Fi genre and Debra Driza’s action-packed debut certainly kept me entertained from the beginning through to the end but also left me with a number of unanswered questions.

Sixteen year-old Mila believed she was a human living in a small town with her ‘mother’ after the death of her ‘father’ and was never meant to find out that she was an android, built in a science lab and kept hidden to avoid not only the person who helped create her but another group intent on using her for her abilities.

Mila was a really sweet likeable character, I adored her devotion, vulnerability and loyalty, and you wouldn’t have guessed she was a machine based on her emotions and feelings; she really grew in strength as the story progressed both in personality and physically but it took me a while to fully understand her and the reasoning behind why everything had been kept so hidden; I think there is a lot of information we are yet to find out.

The plot was quite intriguing; Mila was created as a military experiment in artificial intelligence and has been programmed to do the unimaginable and the group behind the experiment were brutal in their teachings and with the plans they had for her. The story was written well, the ongoing action and the information we are being fed kept the pacing consistent although at times I found it was information overload, scenes were being drawn out and sensory details seemed at times to be missing, it was enjoyable none the less but as the first book in the series, it didn’t truly wow me.

I liked the secondary characters but we don’t really learn a lot about each of them, I wanted to know more about Hunter especially but he didn’t play a huge role and I feel there is still a lot we haven’t yet found out about him. Lucas was wonderful but also quite mysterious and Mila 3.0 and the bad guys were each written well but needed to be further developed.

I would have loved more romance and initially I thought there would be an opportunity between Hunter/Mila but unfortunately nothing really progressed, although he seemed to play heavily in her thoughts there was no real outcome and he was absent for a majority of the book.

The ending was heart wrenching and I still have a number of unanswered questions so I am definitely eager to see how the story progresses in the sequel.

Overall, Mila 2.0 is filled with conspiracies, violence, intense action scenes and hopefully the possibility of a budding romance; it left me satisfied yet eager to learn more.

Thank-you kindly to Harper Collins Children, for the opportunity to read and review Mila 2.0.