[Review] The Unquiet by Mikaela Everett

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Title: The Unquiet

Author: Mikaela Everett

Publisher: Greenwillow Books

Release Date: September 22nd 2015 

Goodreads Page

Source: e-ARC via edelweiss
Synopsis:

For most of her life, Lirael has been training to kill—and replace—a duplicate version of herself on a parallel Earth. She is the perfect sleeper-soldier. But she’s beginning to suspect she is not a good person.

The two Earths are identical in almost every way. Two copies of every city, every building, even every person. But the people from the second Earth know something their duplicates do not—two versions of the same thing cannot exist. They—and their whole planet—are slowly disappearing. Lira has been trained mercilessly since childhood to learn everything she can about her duplicate, to be a ruthless sleeper-assassin who kills that other Lirael and steps seamlessly into her life.

An intricate, literary stand-alone from an astonishing new voice, The Unquiet takes us deep inside the psyche of a strong teenage heroine struggling with what she has been raised to be and who she really is. Fans of eerily futuristic and beautifully crafted stories such as Never Let Me Go, Orphan Black, and Fringe will find themselves haunted by this unsettling debut.

I received an e-ARC from the publisher via edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion whatsoever nor was I compensated in any shape or form in exchange for this review.

The Unquiet is about a girl named Lirael who is from the other Earth, Earth II. Both earths are exact clones of each other, but Earth II is dying and they believe that two earths cannot exist at the same time. So Earth II sent sleepers to Earth I to kill their alternate and take over their lives. Lirael has been a cottage girl, training all her life to take over her alternate's life and The Unquiet follows her journey and the struggles she faces in her effort to become a sleeper.

This book was super creepy in the beginning, since it talks a lot about the cottages and the way Lirael and the other children learn to be strong and to be "better" than the children of Earth I. The entirety of the novel has an echo of that creepy vibe from the beginning of the novel, but not quite as strong as it was in those first couple of pages, since it does flash forward a couple years.

The plot of the novel was really interesting and captivating as well. We read from the point of view of the alternate Lirael, the sleeper. We get to see into the mindset of someone who has been trained all her life to take over another person's life. I found it really dragged me into the story as I watched Lirael struggle with her own identity and also be a good sleeper at the same time.

The Unquiet is a captivating novel about alternate versions of people and identity. It's a novel that's just slightly creepy and set in a future earth. Overall, this novel is an interesting read and I recommend it to those who are interested in sci-fi.

Happy Reading!