Vitro by Jessica Khoury REVIEW

 Summary:

On a remote island in the Pacific, scientists privately funded by the mysterious corporation Corpus have taken the test tube embryos and given them life. These beings - the Vitros - have knowledge and abilities most humans can only dream of. But they also have one enormous flaw.

Seventeen year old Sophie Crue is determined to get to Skin Island to find her mother, a scientist who left Sophie behind years ago. With the help of Jim Julien, a young charter pilot, she arrives - and discovers a terrifying secret she never imagined: she has a Vitro twin, Lux, who is the culmination of Corpus's dangerous research.

Now Sophie is torn between reuniting with the mother who betrayed her and protecting the genetically enhanced twin she never knew existed. But untangling the twisted strands of these relationships will have to wait, for Sophie and Jim are about to find out what happens when science stretches too far beyond its reach.

My Thoughts:

I read this book not knowing that it was a sequel....oops. But it does work as a stand alone as well.

Sophie's mother abandoned her as a child to move to Skin Island to continue her research. Sophie was close to her mother when she was still around, and missed her dearly for years. She gets an emergency email from her mom, telling Sophie to go to Skin Island. Sophie is worried, so she tries to find someone who will take her there. After no luck, she runs into Jim, an old childhood friend, who reluctantly agrees to take her there. 

Turns out, her mom was not the one who sent the email - it was Nicolaus, a "failed" Vitro. He gets her to trust him, and then betrays her trust. He wants to control the island and force Sophie to stay with him. 

Moira is not the the saint her daughter thinks she is. Her work revolves around creating and experimenting on lab-grown humans. And in a twist, it turns out that Sophie was a successful Vitro that Moira adopted as her own daughter.

It was so hard to put this novel down. The morality around the creation of grown humans that are experimented on has always been a really interesting topic to me.

If you like dystopian books, then I totally recommend this one.

My Rating: 5 stars