What's Left of Me (The Hybrid Chronicles #1)

What's Left of Me not only features a stunning cover, but it truly cap­tures Eva and Addie, the two protagonists. Eva, the reces­sive soul that should have dis­ap­peared accord­ing to her soci­ety, was born and marked for death. And Addie, the dom­i­nate soul, des­tined to for­get her best friend and other half. But they share a secret. They are hybrids, a title coined to those with reces­sive souls that refused to just fade away. To the gov­ern­ment they are deemed a threat to soci­ety and there­fore must be locked up, con­tained, fixed or be killed.

The best part of What's Left of Me was the rela­tion­ship between Addie and Eva. I have to sit and applaud Zhang's skill at craft­ing two very dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters, who share the same body, yet they strug­gle to portray just one per­son to every­one else. Against her bet­ter judge­ment, Addie agrees to prac­tice let­ting Eva take control of their body. She knows what this could mean for them if they are caught and discovered. How­ever, she also knows how much it means to Eva to not just be the soul every­one else thinks is gone. Eva wants to be real. So they take the risk and their worst fears are, unfor­tu­nately, realized.

Quote: "We'd been born with our souls' fin­gers inter­locked. What if we'd never let go?"

The bond and love these two sis­ter had for one another was phe­nom­e­nal and, at times, tear jerk­ing. Though, I should say I did not cry dur­ing this novel. But I will say it was deeply emo­tional when the sisters inter­nally strug­gled to ful­fill both souls' needs with­out depriv­ing the other. Of course, this was nearly impos­si­ble. Eva is the reces­sive soul and as such is used to lit­er­ally tak­ing the back­seat to whatever Addie needs or wants. At times that frus­trated me to no end because I could just feel Eva ready to burst free and be her own per­son, but Addie would take those moments away from her.

Quote: "I was caged in our body and caged in his arms and, some­how, the for­mer was the real prison."

And while I remained angry at Addie for her self­ish­ness, Eva not once blamed her sis­ter for the way she felt. That is not to say they always got along. There were quite a few times they stopped talk­ing to each other in the novel, but I just loved how they made up.

Not only did Zhang have to keep track of Addie and Eva's char­ac­ters, but she cre­ated two char­ac­ters in one body in sev­eral dif­fer­ent instances. Now, I know from read­ing that sen­tence, that may A) not make a lot of sense or B) not sound very dif­fi­cult. But it fas­ci­nated me how Zhang pulled it off. There were times where Addie and Eva would be talk­ing with a char­ac­ter only for him/her to switch mid-conversation to their other soul. So you have two dif­fer­ent man­ner­isms, facial expres­sions, tone, ect. for this one per­son and you have Addie and Eva able to not only tell the dif­fer­ence between the two, but to also con­vince the reader of the switch. And I'll even take it a step fur­ther to say that after a cer­tain point I could tell which soul was who before Addie and Eva con­firmed it for me. I think this is a tes­ta­ment to just how well these char­ac­ters were crafted.

And that is where the pac­ing and plot come into play. At first I thought the book was mov­ing too fast in the begin­ning because I was get­ting intro­duced to a bunch of new char­ac­ters and STUFF was hap­pen­ing very quickly, but it works well that way. Look­ing back, What's Left of Me doesn't really have much downtime because some­thing is always hap­pen­ing, but at the same time it doesn't read like a thriller either because it's not exactly action packed. Oxy­moron? Why, yes. But it was riv­et­ing and I felt I NEEDED to figure out the mystery to why the hybrids were treated so badly. Inter­est­ingly, I would usu­ally take this time to point out and com­plain about world build­ing flaws. There is very lit­tle mention of the out­side world and how they deal with hybrids. But, it works in this instance. The reader is inten­tion­ally kept in the dark until a few plot twists are revealed. Even after com­plet­ing the novel, I feel like there is so much more to come.

Final Verdict: This novel was so fas­ci­nat­ing and awe­some. After all that I just have one last thing to say: More now, please.

I have to admit the premise of this story intrigued me and the writing at the beginning kept my interest. There's alot of promise in this debut novel. I love unique YA Sci-fi stories.

At the beginning I was hooked with the writing that swept me away into this alternate America with children/teens who struggle with two souls.

Then the story felt more like GOLDEN COMPASS only instead of Daemon(animal guides)this story has two souls trapped in a body. In this alternate world when children reach a certain age, they 'settle' or the other soul 'disappears'. Only in the case of Addie, her other soul, Eva, stays. While in school another girl catches her eye, Hally, who would be popular only she's foreign. Only there might be more then that.


The writing moves along well enough but when Zhang goes back and forth with the different souls? It got distracting and very jarring. A better example of using this format has to be THE HOST by Stephanie Meyer.

The hospital scene was suspenseful and the experiments they do on the hybrid children are pretty chilling. Also the dialogue moves this story right along. I did have a few questions though that include what happens when one soul 'falls in love' with someone that the other soul hates? **This is touched on only briefly and towards the end of the novel. Wouldn't a parent know if another soul is still inside their child? As a mother I know when something is up with my own kiddo. It's called mother's intuition. I didn't get a sense of that in this story. Also I wanted more emotional reactions and to see more conflicts/struggles going on with not only the hybirds but others in this society.

Intriguing premise set in an alternative America that is promising but falls a little short. I'm hoping that the next book shows us more of what happens in the rebellion and also the consequences of keeping both souls. Still there's some promise with this series. I'm curious where book two will go next!

It isn't often that a book really takes me by surprise with an original concept. What's Left of Me did exactly that. Even better than an original concept is the beautiful, compelling writing. I don't think there's anything about this story that I didn't appreciate and enjoy.

The concept of two souls born into every body is intriguing. Add to that a government that actively (you have NO IDEA how actively until you finish reading!) seeks to make sure all kids have "settled" (the recessive soul fades away into nothing) by the time they're ten or else they're labeled hybrids and institutionalized, and you have a delicious recipe for disaster when two souls refuse to settle. Toss in a large dose of government propoganda against hybrids and a nice big pack of lies and secrets, and the stakes are even higher.

But all of that glitzy concept aside, this book is wonderful because the writing is wonderful. I had no trouble keeping up with which soul/character was speaking as they each have such distinct personalities. I enjoyed the fact that Addie and Eva make many mistakes or panic and freeze when they should probably run because that's real. Most teenage girls with a huge secret to hide who land on the radar of a terrifying government agency wouldn't have clue one in how to deal with it. I appreciated the emotional journey the characters took as well. It was fraught with drama and mistakes and love.

I was utterly compelled. I thought about the story when I had to put the book aside to deal with real life, which is the mark of a really great story to me. I highly recommend and will eagerly anticipate the sequel!

This is one of the coolest covers I've seen in a really long time! I've been staring at it for a couple of weeks and only just now noticed the profile of the other girl.

I was really looking forward to reading this because the summary sounded intriguing and unique. Kat Zhang has done an excellent job of presenting a story that questions what it is that makes us a person. Is it our soul or is it a physical body?

This was more Sci-Fi than I expected and I did find it hard to keep track of who was who at times. For example, you might have three physical people in the same room but there would actually be six total - two souls each sharing one body. When the topic of romance came up, I felt a little awkward because how do you handle a kissing situation when both people can experience things but only one wants too? I'm sure this will be explored in future books but I couldn't help thinking that it vaguely reminded me of a Siamese Twin scenario.

I do feel this story is well written with a very interesting concept and raises thought provoking questions. While it may not have been the book for me, someone else will love it, I have no doubt!