Mila 2.0 Debra Driza

Mila 2.0
Debra Driza
2013 Katherine Tegen Books
ISBN – 9780062090362
Genre – Science Fiction
Age – High School
3 Stars

 

Sixteen year old Mila, just moved to a new town after her father died in a fire. She is finally starting to adjust to her new life with a new friend, and a boy that she has a crush on. However, that all changes when she falls out of a moving truck and cuts her arm open. What she sees is quite surprising. Instead of blood and bones, there is plastic and wires. She confronts her mother, only to find out that she is actually a robot designed to be a government spy. All of her memories are fake, her dad did not die, and her mom is not her mom but her creator. Her mother took Mila on the run when she found out that the robot was scheduled to be terminated. She wanted to give Mila that chance to live like a real girl. Now the government is trying to find her, and they must go back on the run if they hope to save Mila’s life.

I like the characters of Mila and her mother, they seem like real people. Even though Mila is not a human girl, she is more human seeming than many young adult characters. She has depth that oddly comes from her false implanted memories, the life that isn’t really hers. She was designed as a robot to emulate the feelings, attitude, and actions of a normal girl. This puts a lot of interesting reflection in her artificial mind. There is a lot of action in the book, but most of its value to me is in Mila’s realizations of what she is, and what she wants be versus what she can expect to be. This book is very heavy in character building and contemplation. I like this except I feel short changed in world building. However, this is slightly solved by the fact that Mila and her mom are never in the same place for very long.