I thought the premise of this book was so promising. A future America where the world’s resources have been abused to such a point that each family is only allowed one child to try and safeguard the future of the planet (or what’s left of it).

Humankind is everything’s and everyone’s most dangerous predator. Blindly killing its own planet, slowly wounding it over the centuries. Forcing my generation to mop up the blood.

So there lies the problem for Ava and Mira – they’re twins. Their whole lives they’ve spent trying to hide their secret from the Guard, sharing Ava’s official identity and taking it in turns to be the one that leaves the basement and go to school etc.

But when Halton, the Governor’s son, realises that there are two Ava’s and not one, Ava and Mira find themselves on the run while their dad is sent to trial for treason against the government. It seems like their dad may have planned for this moment as he has left them a trail to follow to escape from America and into Canada where they will be safe.

Sounds interesting, right? And mostly it was. But I found myself lacking any kind of connection to the two characters, they seemed flat and emotionless. And because I had no connection to the characters, the excitement and drama was lost for me so I didn’t feel the same sort of peril that they did when they were almost caught again and again.

I would have loved the characters to be a bit deeper. The chapters alternated viewpoints between the two girls, but because they were so flat, I found it hard to figure out which character I was reading and having to jump back to the start of the chapter to read the title and figure it out.

My other problem is that the book just seemed too short so we jumped around quite a lot, I would have liked more descriptions of their travels and the time they spent with other people, but it felt a bit ‘glossed over’. Considering the whole book was about them being ‘on the run’, we didn’t spend much time reading about them actually travelling.

Then we get to the conclusion, and the ‘plot twist’ wasn’t that surprising to me, you could tell through the book that this was setting up to be a series by how slowly it was moving. I think I was about 80% through before the real action began, so the climax of the book felt very rushed and left me feeling disappointed to tell the truth.