A Review of Road to Eugenica
Drea Smith has always been a bit weird, but in a completely normal way. She's a clutz, she doesn't have many friends, and she lives her life behind her camera lens. When her and her father are hit by a drunk driver, her father is killed and Drea is badly injured. Everything gets even stranger when she gets out of the hospital. Suddenly, she's super strong, super fast and is able to speak any language fluently. To make matters worse, she's having visions of another world: Eugenica.
I was so intrigued by the summary of this book and the tag line: Two dimensions and the girl who connects them. I've always loved multiple dimensions and Sci-Fi in general. I was interested to see if this was a time-travel sort of story or more like a portal fantasy. A.M. Rose goes beyond expectations here and creates a completely new kind of Science Fiction story.
The characters in this story were all well developed and work well in this complex plot. Drea is interesting, intelligent and curious. I enjoyed watching her explore her new abilities and struggle with figuring out her feelings for her long-time friend, Dylan, and the strange new boy at school, Maddox. There is so much mystery and curiosity surrounding every character, even Drea's absent and workaholic mother, that I found myself invested and interested in everyone in Drea's life. One of the reoccurring themes of the story is "Don't Trust Anyone" and as a reader, it's easy to get drawn into the paranoia. I found myself questioning everyone and everything that happened, being just as scared and skittish as Drea herself.
A.M. Rose is a master of tension. There were so many scenes that could have been melodramatic or even boring, like Drea coming home to an empty house after a disturbing experience at a lacrosse game. Instead of trying to flip through to the action, like I've found myself doing in other books before, I was holding my breath and digging my nails into husband's arm, just like I would in a horror movie. I was very impressed by the author's ability to draw out the terror Drea felt in this scene and pass that fear onto her reader.
The plot of this story is so complex. There is a coming of age story, a love triangle, family drama and the science fiction element. It's a lot going on, but the author does a good job of melding everything together. As we progress through the novel, we get more and more questions. And while the plot twists were surprising and excited, we don't really get any answers to these many questions until the last 5% of the novel. Even with those answers, we're left with more questions than before. Since this is the first book in a series, there's still so many questions at the end of the book that it's hard to feel satisfied with the ending.
Road to Eugenica is a complex and compelling first book in A.M. Rose's science-fiction series. The characters, Drea our main character and narrator included, are mysterious and well-rounded. The story has many elements that mesh and meld together well, but don't expect to have a full, complete ending. We'll have to wait for the next book in the series to get all our questions answered.