Publisher Description
"Jenna Strong is a futuristic Jason Bourne."--Justine Magazine
Fans of Matched and Divergent will be hooked by this fast-paced, nail-biting survival story, featuring an unforgettable heroine reminiscent of Katniss Everdeen and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’s Lisbeth Salander.
The year is 2113. In Jenna Strong’s world, ACID—the most brutal controlling police force in history—rule supreme. No throwaway comment or whispered dissent goes unnoticed—or unpunished. And it was ACID agents who locked Jenna away for life, for a horrendous crime she struggles to remember. But Jenna’s violent prison time has taught her how to survive by any means necessary. When a mysterious rebel group breaks her out, she must use her strength, speed, and skill to stay one step ahead of ACID and try to uncover the truth about what really happened on that terrible night two years ago. They’ve taken her life, her freedom, and her memories away from her. How can she reclaim anything when she doesn’t know who to trust?
Winner of the North East Teenage Book Award
"Great suspense . . . excellent characters and gripping action."--TheGuardian.com
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The question dogging Pass's debut is, "Why?" Why has 17-year-old Jenna Strong an escapee from a maximum-security prison two years after being sentenced to life for murdering her parents? Why is she given an elaborate new identity by mysterious strangers and sent to hide in a squalid ghetto of 2113 London, now a police state? It's a long time before these basic motivational questions are addressed. Meanwhile, Jenna becomes entangled with the son of the man who broke her out of prison, her cover goes wrong, and she winds up on the run from the agents of ACID the Agency for Crime Investigation and Defense the new masters of England. It's a standard totalitarian dystopia fraught with the usual perils for a protagonist living outside the rules, and there's nothing wrong with that. But it's not particularly twisty or intriguing, either, and with no apparent rationale for the action, the book relies on readers' genre expectations to carry the plot until some of the questions begin to be framed. Ages 14 up.
