Let's Try Reviewing This Thing: What's Left of Me, by Kat Zhang

(If you’re short on time or just don’t write reading walls of text, there is a short summary of the review at the bottom in bold.)

I was going to do a history or contemporary fiction book next, but then I read What’s Left of Me and fell in love. So while I’m still coming down from my just-finished-book high, I’ll give you my opinion on this wonderful first novel by Kat Zhang.

The funny thing is, I almost didn’t pick this book up when I first saw it in the library, fresh out of the box. I mean, the cover wasn’t all the interesting to me, so I didn’t even read the summary when I first passed over it.

However, the second time I saw it sitting on the table a few days later, I decided to try it since the book I was reading wasn’t working out for me (more on that book next review, probably).  And boy, am I glad I opened up that cover and read the inside of it.

Eva and Addie started out the same way as everyone else—two souls woven together in one body, taking turns controlling their movements as they learned how to walk, how to sing, how to dance. But as they grew, so did the worried whispers. Why aren’t they settling? Why isn’t one of them fading? The doctors ran tests, the neighbors shied away, and their parents begged for more time. Finally Addie was pronounced healthy and Eva was declared gone. Except she wasn’t…

For the past three years, Eva has clung to the remnants of her life. Only Addie knows she’s still there, trapped inside their body. Then one day, they discover there may be a way for Eva to move again. The risks are unimaginable—hybrids are considered a threat to society, so if they are caught, Addie and Eva will be locked away with the others. And yet…for a chance to smile, to twirl, to speak, Eva will do anything.

I don’t know about you, but this really caught my interest. Two people in one body? Last time I read a book like that Stephanie Meyer was almost redeemed in my eyes despite making the Twilight saga. If What’s Left of Me was anything like The Host, it would be a good read for me.

And it was a very, very good book, though not all that similar to The Host. Unlike Meyer’s sci-fi novel about aliens who take over human bodies, in What’s Left of Me people are naturally born with two souls. One soul—the “recessive soul”—is supposed to disappear during childhood, and bodies where the second soul won’t leave are called hybrids, and are feared because apparently they’re the sole cause of every single American war since forever and they’re the reason our country doesn’t trade with anybody else or deal with them. Hybrids are shut away in institutions if discovered and subjected to experiments in hopes to “cure” them.

As it implies in the summary, the book is in the point of view of Eva, the recessive soul in a body. It’s an interesting view to read from, since for the majority of the book Eva isn’t able to use the body she lives in—that goes to her sister, Addie, the dominant soul in her body. For the longest time she’s almost a completely passive observer, unable to do anything except observe what Addie sees and does and talk to Addie about it. In this way it’s the exact opposite of The Host, which was in the point of view of the alien who had taken over a human’s body.

In a way I think Eva’s perspective is much more interesting, and making her the narrator instead of Addie was a smart move. She’s the recessive soul; she is the one who should have left, who should have died off and left Addie to be normal. She’s the one that makes her and Addie abnormal, and she feels that difference much more strongly than Addie would. She also has to deal with the guilty anger that Addie feels to Eva for being the reason she can’t just be a regular member of society.

The book reinforces the ‘what makes humanity human’ theme strongly, especially told by Eva. She makes the reader feel for her plight—she’s a person too, despite what the government and society says about souls like her. She doesn’t want to just ‘go away,’ she wants to survive, and more than that she wants to live, and so does every other hybrid out there who are told that the person they are closest with—literally their other half—are evil and need to fade away as what is normal. Eva’s struggle to regain the easy sharing of her and Addie’s body like it was when they were children was moving to me, but more heart-wrenching than that was the struggle of the hybrids overall in the conditions they are put in, especially in the institutes. You feel for all of the characters, especially Eva, and I’ll admit that I did cry a little during one of the scenes.

There was a pretty open-ended ending, however, with a lot of questions left unanswered, so I’m hoping to see a sequel sometime in the future. Overall, eight out of ten.

Tl;dr: It was a great book with a riveting storyline and characters I could root for—if you haven’t checked it out already, you should!