This Mortal Coil - Book Rant

This Mortal Coil (This Mortal Coil #1)
by Emily Suvada

What is it about:
There's no gene for RUN LIKE HELL.

When a lone soldier, Cole, arrives with news of Lachlan Agatta's death, all hope seems lost for Catarina. Her father was the world's leading geneticist, and humanity's best hope of beating a devastating virus. Then, hidden beneath Cole's genehacked enhancements she finds a message of hope: Lachlan created a vaccine. Only she can find and decrypt it, if she can unravel the clues he left for her.

The closer she gets, the more she finds herself at risk from Cartaxus, a shadowy organization with a stranglehold on the world's genetic tech. But it's too late to turn back.As the pieces fit together it's clear there is one final secret that Cat must unlock. A secret that will change everything.

What did I think of it:
*warning: spoilers*
I was drawn in by the title of this book and it did seem to have a cool premise. Yet I was left with a bad taste in my mouth when I finished the book.

There's Cat. She is portrayed as a heroine with a disability compared to the other people in the world created in this book. Of course it turns out that she does not actually has a disability, but her supposed disability is a plot point... *sigh* Shall we bet that in book two she's the best in everything she couldn't do in this book because of her 'disability'.

Then there's the contradicting messages this book is shouting all over the place: Science is bad! No, wait... It isn't! It's anti-vaxxers who are bad! No, wait... Maybe they have a point... Science is the root of all evil! Etc...

Maybe the author didn't mean to put messages into this book and she was just trying to tell a story, but the constant flipping of focus made both the story and the underlying messages a total mess. That I kept reading was because I was curious where the author tried to take this story.

There were of course two love interests, although one of them was as so often in YA there to make Cat insta-special. It was clear he was going to be booted to the curb.

The one thing that I liked was the virus and how it acted, but there were not enough scenes that really dealt with the effects of the virus.

All in all I was disappointed, and I won't read the next book.

Why should you read it:
The virus is really cool!


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