Starters by Lissa Price

Genre:  YA Dystopian

Starters Series, Book 1

Lissa Price's website

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Description (taken from Goodreads):

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. . . .

We're in a post-apocalyptic world where there are only Starters and Enders.  The Spore War destroyed all the people in between because they weren't lucky enough to be vaccinated.  And since old people, aka the Enders, are old enough to vote and make laws, they kind of ruin life for the kids, aka the Starters.  Did this world work for me?  Maybe, not really...

I felt like I couldn't connect with the main character, Callie.  In order to make some money to help get her and her brother off the street, she sells her body to rich Enders.  It's like playing the Sims but in real-life.  There have been a few movies with this kind of theme, but the plot and background for this book is very original.  So, yes there's action.  Yes, there's intrigue and mystery.  Yes, there's some romance.  But half of the time, I wasn't buying it.  I couldn't get into the setting, the characters, the back-and-forth action, etc.

The author does a very good job of wrapping things up and explaining things in the end (which helped explain why I wasn't buying some things in the plot).  And she sets it up nicely to add another novel to this one.

Did I like it?  No, not really.  But I think that's more because of me and not the book.  I ask myself why I didn't like it, and I can't give a really good reason.  Would I recommend it?  I'd tell people to look into other reviews or get it from the library.  Definitely a shiny cover...

Challenges:  Debut Author Challenge and Young Adult Reading Challenge