Review: The Similars

The Similars by Rebecca Hanover
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Many thanks to NetGalley, Sourcebooks Fire, and Rebecca Hanover for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. My opinions are 100% my own and independent of receiving an advance copy.

Imagine the chance of going to school with the first set of human clones. The Similars, a group of six teenagers, will be attending Darkwood Academy and Emma is less than excited. Created by a rogue lab technician, they have been kept secret, raised apart from society, with only each other for company by a mysterious guardian. Until now. Now they will be going to school with their human counterparts. What will they be like? Will they be exactly like their doubles? Will they like the same things, behave the same way, be good at the same things? I mean, they have the exact same DNA. Emma might be more excited if one of them weren’t the exact copy of her best friend, Oliver. Oliver is the only one who won’t be meeting his clone because he committed suicide last summer. Emma still hasn’t come to terms with his death and now she has to run into his face everywhere - in class, in the halls, in the cafeteria. But it isn’t Oliver, it is Levi, his clone. Levi would rather not have to walk around with some dead kid’s face but he wasn’t given a choice in the matter. He gets that Emma can’t stand him, but she doesn’t even know him. But Emma doesn’t trust the clones, something is off with them. They can’t be trusted. But no one believes her. Now Prudence, her human friend has been attacked. Was it the clones? Was it someone who wants the clones dead and got the wrong twin? Emma is determined to find out and that might just give her some answers to why Oliver died.

I really like the premise of this story. The execution lacked for me. There were too many things going on and I didn’t find any of the story lines very exciting. It had potential but without development it fell flat. I didn’t really bond with any of the characters, so I didn’t really care what happened to any of them. There was the usual teenage angst, very predictable stuff with the cool kids being mean to Emma and her friends, of course the Emma/Levi romantic storyline, really nothing new, not even an interesting take on the old stuff. It was so predictable that the author didn’t even bother to develop the romantic storyline. They didn’t like each other and then they were in love - for no reason at all. Having six clones meant that there were too many to develop any of their characters, but even as a group we didn’t really get to know them. You could have had their point of view told through a character like Pippa. There were some enjoyable parts and the ending had some worthwhile bits, but overall I was disappointed.

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