Renegade by J.A. Souders

Publisher's summary: Since the age of three, sixteen-year-old Evelyn Winters has trained to be Daughter of the People in the underwater utopia known as Elysium. Selected from hundreds of children for her ideal genes, all her life she’s believed that everything is perfect. Her world. Her people. The Law.

But when Gavin Hunter, a Surface Dweller, accidentally stumbles into Elysium’s secluded little world, Evelyn comes to a startling realization: Everything she knows is a lie.

Her memories have been altered.

Her mind and body aren’t under her own control.

And the person she knows as Mother is a monster.

Together with Gavin she plans her escape, only to learn that her own mind is a ticking time bomb...and Mother has one last secret that will destroy them all.

My Take: I was immediately intrigued with this book the moment I started reading. And then, when I got to the second chapter, I started feeling like I was experiencing déjà vu, but it wasn’t my déjà vu! It was the main character’s (Evelyn’s) who completely forgot everything that had just happened to her, and it was as if she were starting her day all over again. It was at that point that I was determined to devour this book and find out what the heck was going on! Renegade is bizarre, unusual, dark, twisted and intense from start to finish!

The intriguing characters and the bizarre world that J.A. Souders imaginatively constructed in Renegade were very well done and were easily, and very vividly, recreated in my mind’s eye. As for the characters…I’m still having a hard time deciding what I think about Evelyn, but I really liked Gavin. And Mother is beyond psycho! What the heck is up with that woman?

The whole book was executed beautifully. The first half of the book was all about slowly discovering, right along with Eve and Gavin, what the heck was actually going on in this bizarre “under the water” world. And it’s all so crazy good that I just couldn’t get enough of the bizarreness. And then it’s the last half of the book that trumps it all! But it’s not like the last half of the book all of a sudden then becomes highly action packed! It’s just that things get so unbelievably out of hand that you realize how crazy things really are! The ending is epic! Except, it was an awesomely sucky ending!