2012-10-24

Review: Revived

Title: Revived
Author: Cat Patrick
Rating: 4
Date of Release: May 8th, 2012
Summary: As a little girl, Daisy Appleby was killed in a  school bus crash. Moments after the accident, she was brought back to life.
A secret government agency has developed a drug called Revive that can bring people back from the ead, and Daisy Appleby, a test subject, has been Revived five times in fifteen years. Daisy takes extraordinary risks, knowing that she can beat death, but each new death also means a new name, a new city, and a new life.
When she meets Matt McKean, Daisy begins to question the moral implications of Revive, and as she discovers the agency's true goals, she realizes she is at the center of something larger--and much more sinister--than she ever imagined.

[Warning: this whole article contains spoilers. While I do not recommend it, if you want to read it I suggest you don't read the review]

You would think, looking at this awesome cover, that Cat Patrick had brought us a very unique premise in sci-fi fiction. I grabbed it eagerly, ignoring the 'meh' reviews on Goodreads. It can't be TOO bad, right?

Above: Daisy

Where do I begin? Well, to start off, Daisy. So you've been given the chance to come back from the dead five times. What do you do? Complain about having to move each time, of course. Have a 'holier than thou' attitude to the agents who live in your house. Darling, in case you haven't noticed, Mason and Cassie have to move too, every time you forget your EpiPen and get stung by those meany bees. Daisy doesn't seem to care that other people in her life are affected by her move. 

As for the other characters, I liked some of them and hated some of them. Let's start off with Matt. If I have to read one more 'Ohmigosh he is so hottttt I'm going to die he's so cutttee and perffeect and I just love him and he loves me and we all eat rainbows and butterflies, yay!' story, this will be me:


Matt is perfect. He's rich. He lives with his pushover parents in a mansion and drives and awesome car. Even after his sister, dies, he's still perfect. Still has a car, and pushover parents, and can fly and see Daisy in her new home. And, while Audrey (Matt's little sister, dying of cancer) is sick, Daisy thinks telling Matt about how she has come back from the dead five times will result in anything except him demanding that Daisy steal it and give it to Audrey. Really? Did you even think that one over, Daisy? Of course, it doesn't work, because for some reason, it can work on a girl who was stung by many bees and is all swollen and filled with bee venom, but it doesn't work on cancer. Convenient?

Which brings me to another quick point. How does Revive even work? How is it possible at all to bring someone back from the dead? There was a lot of potential for some interesting sciency stuff or even philosophical stuff, but instead we got a long discourse about what Audrey's room looks like and how hot Matt is. For Science Fiction, the 'science' element was severely lacking.

One more point on the bad side before we move over to the 'pros' side. The plot in the middle meanders around. So Daisy goes out, get drunks, come back--with, guess who? (hint: ohmigosh he's so hotttt I'm going to dieeee). Um, so? Daisy goes a whole bunch of places, but it doesn't seem to affect the story a whole lot. Maybe the fact that I didn't care about the main character clouded my judgement, I can't know for sure. All I know is that 3/4 of the book was 'ohmigosh, he's so hottt' and 'ohmigosh, my new best friend is dying. That obviously means I have to tell her brother that I came back from the dead. But guess what, he can't use it to save his sister'. The last 1/4 was interesting, if only it had taken up more of the story.

All of this wasn't horrible. There were parts I enjoyed, or actually cared about. Audrey was, by far, the best character in the story. Mason was good too, but he could get pretty unrealistic at times. So, I liked Audrey and her whole subplot. But again, I didn't think her death mattered much in the story. So. Daisy's sad, and she has to be there for Matt. Okay. But how does that stop the villain. I feel like her death was setting up for a whole philosophical side, but at most, that "side" got one page. I found too many problems with this story, and the bad outweighs the good.

Final Score: 4


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