It was suppose to be a fun weekend
at the cabin with her sister and best friend, but on the drive up Lilah
realizes something is wrong. The wind is getting worse, hail the size of soccer
balls begins to fall, and cell service is out. The three girls continue to
drive up the mountain to the cabin, knowing that there is a landline and that
Lilah’s father is on his way. Only he isn’t.
Calls home are spotty at best, and the girls discover that
not only has New York City practically been leveled (along with much of the
country), but Lilah’s dad is being blamed.
Mr. Swellows is a well know
environmentalist, but the past years have turned him from scientific authority
into a crazed end on times environmental terrorist. He is the one who disabled
weather satellites, making sure that no one knew of the catastrophic events
heading for the cities. It’s is fault that thousands of people are dead, and as
it turns out it is his fault that Lilah is sick.
Ever since Lilah can remember, she has trouble breathing.
Pills and surgeries have plagued her life, at seventeen she has never been
allowed to stay home alone in case she stops breathing and has to be
resuscitated and taken to the hospital. Her father has kept her inside their
houses, in climate controlled and pressurized rooms. He made her sick, she was
his control group for medicines, theories and environmental tests.
After Lilah’s best friend deserts
her and informs on her to the FBI, Lilah and her sister are taken in by a group
of scientists who know more about her and her family then Lilah knows about
herself. Befriending the lead scientists son, Lilah begins to investigate.
Files on her and her mother are found behind locked cabinets. Pills in
different dosages and animal testing are being done behind doors. Experiments
are running rampant and Lilah doesn’t know what to do, or what any of it means.
Lilah has to decide if some mistakes and experiments are worth it in the search
for the greater good of humanity and the planet. But how much can she tolerate?
And what are her father and the secretive scientists going to allow her to see
before the Lilah experiment is killed off for the greater good of the research?
The book was okay. I think that the
premise is good, but I didn’t like the main character. She was whiney and I
felt no real connection to her. It also felt like it ended rather abruptly,
almost like the author wrote 300 pages and then decided that was enough so she
quickly finished the novel. At the moment there doesn’t appear to be a sequel,
but the way the book ended leaves it open to have one in the future.
