Deadly Design - Debra Dockter

Kyle and Connor are twins, but Kyle was born two years later.  Their parents are carriers of a fatal disease called spinal muscular atrophy, and their mom has had six miscarriages.  They went to a fertility doctor who designed them in the lab, and while Connor was inside his mom Kyle was frozen in the lab.  Kyle started asking questions right after his preschool graduation.  His dad explained things to him later that day.  Connor knew they were twins, but was told to keep it to himself until their parents felt it was the right time to tell Kyle.  Fast forward eleven years to Connor's last track meet and graduation a few weeks later.  Kyle is considering not going to either one.  Emma, Connor's girlfriend, is trying to convince him to go.  She tells him that Connor would want him there to support him.  After getting the guilt trip by his father Kyle goes to Connor's last track meet.  He runs into Cami, Emma's best friend, and she is surprised to see him there.  After the meet they all go to Luigi's to celebrate.  Cami and Kyle are off to the side while Kyle's parents praise Connor and Emma about how they will graduate in a few weeks and then after the summer head to Kansas State University.  Later that night Connor comes in Kyle's room and they play video games for half the night.  The next morning Kyle goes to wake Connor up and finds him dead in his bed.  The day after the funeral Kyle's parents tell him Emma wants him to read Connor's valedictorian speech at graduation.  He reluctantly agrees, but thinking he's not worthy to read his brothers words.  At graduation Kyle reads the speech that would make Connor proud of him.  Shortly after graduation the autopsy results come back saying Connor died from a heart attack.  Kyle goes and gets tested, and the tests come back clean.  As Kyle comes back from getting a job application he hears on the news that Alexis Warren collapsed and died, a day before her eighteenth birthday.  His parents knew her and her parents from the fertility clinic where Connor and Kyle were made.  Later that night Kyle does some research and he finds a blog for another kid Triagon Summers, who also died on his eighteenth birthday back in April.  The next day Kyle tells Cami what he found out, and asks her to take him to the fertility clinic where it all started.  They see his dad walk out of the clinic when they get there.  Kyle talks to Dr. Preston who says all he can do is direct Kyle to Dr. Hodges, the same thing he told Kyle's dad.  Dr. Hodges tells Kyle's dad, Kyle, and Cami that Dr. Mueller, the one who started Genesis, disappeared eighteen years ago.  Dr. Hodges explains to them how after fertilization happens the embryos with undesired traits are discarded, leaving only the best traits.  Dr. Hodges suggests they find who ever is left and do genetic screens on them.  Kyle puts out a Facebook post about a missing dog named James M. to try and make contact with one of the other Mueller babies.  He goes out for a run and encounters a bully named Teddy.  As they start to fight and Emma shows up and intervenes.  After the fight is broken up Emma tells him she needs a fresh start and she's leaving and moving to Minnesota.  Kyle says good-bye to Emma the next morning, and goes to eat at Don's Diner where Cami spots him and joins him.  They see a strange man they had noticed at Connor's track meet and the Sac and Save taking pictures.  They think nothing of it and make plans for later that night.  They set off fireworks as a distraction from everything, and Kyle contemplates about how things will never be the same again.  On the Fourth of July Kyle and his parents head down to Dallas to have tests run on him.  He meets a few other of the kids made by Dr. Mueller, and runs into James M. in the flesh.  Amber only has a few weeks till she's eighteen and James has a month. Kyle runs into Amber again and as they are talking Kyle sees a woman that was also at their hotel.  As Kyle tries to figure out who she is Amber collapses and dies. The doctors tell everyone they tried to save Amber but couldn't.  They have mapped out their DNA and found a sequence that causes catastrophic heart failure around the age of eighteen.  Their solution is to put a pacemaker into James to keep his heart going.  If it doesn't work then James will die in a few weeks.  While waiting for the taxi outside the hotel Kyle spots the same person who was at Connor's track meet taking pictures.  He chases after him and the guy gets hit by a car.  Before the guy dies he tells Kyle he was made differently, and he won't make it to seventeen.  Can Kyle figure out a way to live beyond seventeen? 

This was an intriguing book.  It shows how much we trust science to make everything perfect, including children.  Most parents will do anything for their children, but what happens when science takes over?  What is to stop the scientist from using the children as guinea pigs for their own personal goals?  Children are the future of humanity, and if we let science manipulate them then humanity may not have much of a future. 

T.B.
7/30/15

The Gardener - S.A. Bodeen

TroDyn Industries is a scientific complex just outside of Melby Falls. They own most of the businesses, and have paid for most of the equipment and supplies at the high school. Mason is considering doing a summer internship there, but his mom doesn't want him to. She doesn't give him a specific reason, so he decides to go snooping in his mom's room. He discovers that she used to work for TroDyn. He sneaks into the nursing home where she works to confront her. She doesn't want to talk about TroDyn. As his mom checks on her patients one of them, a teenage girl, wakes up. Mason helps her escape, and along with Jack, head to Jack's parents cabin. The stay for a day until the police show up. They go on the run again and head to Powell's Books, where a former TroDyn employee is giving a talk. Dr. Emerson ends up explaining that the teenage girl was an experiment to see if humans could be created to supply themselves with there own food. The girl is really weak and the only way to save her is to take her back to TroDyn. Mason will soon discover that there is more of a family connection to TroDyn than just his mother being a former employee. I enjoyed this book. A few plot points I had figured out before they were revealed in the book. It was just a matter of paying attention to the little things that may seem minor. I liked the idea that maybe one day we could live by producing our own food like plants do. Let's just hope that humans don't run out of food any time soon. T.B 4/9/11

Subject Seven - James A. Moore

It seems like the government is always trying to create some type of super soldier to use for battles and wars. Subject seven was genetically created for that reason, but he was deemed a failure. He was to be killed when he escapes. He was ten years old, and has been in hiding for the last five years. When he finds out that not all of the failures were killed he seeks them out. Hunter, Cody, Gene, Tina, and Kyrie are all adopted, have been having blackouts for days at a time, and have woken up in places far away from where they live. Subject seven gets them all to Boston, and reveals the truth that they are genetic failures of an experiment to create sleeper super human soldiers. When they come under attack by forces from the company that created them, subject seven says one phrase, and they turn into the super humans they were created to be. After the battle they decide to go after the head of company, and set off to destroy her. I think that there needed to be a little more character development, but over all it was an entertaining book. It kept you wanting to read the next chapter to find out what would happen next. The way it ended seemed to hint at a sequel, but didn't see anything on the authors website about one at this time. T.B. 4/5/11