Mila 2.0 Review

TITLE MILA 2.0 (MILA 2.0 #1)
AUTHOR Debra Driza
PUBLICATION March 12th 2013 by Katherine Tegen Books
READ February 28 to March 01, 2013
SOURCE HarperCollins Canada for review
Find MILA 2.0 on the HarperCollins Canada site here

Mila 2.0 is the first book in an electrifying sci-fi thriller series about a teenage girl who discovers that she is an experiment in artificial intelligence.

Mila was never meant to learn the truth about her identity. She was a girl living with her mother in a small Minnesota town. She was supposed to forget her past —that she was built in a secret computer science lab and programmed to do things real people would never do.

Now she has no choice but to run—from the dangerous operatives who want her terminated because she knows too much and from a mysterious group that wants to capture her alive and unlock her advanced technology. However, what Mila’s becoming is beyond anyone’s imagination, including her own, and it just might save her life.

Mila 2.0 is Debra Driza’s bold debut and the first book in a Bourne Identity–style trilogy that combines heart-pounding action with a riveting exploration of what it really means to be human. Fans of I Am Number Four will love Mila for who she is and what she longs to be—and a cliffhanger ending will leave them breathlessly awaiting the sequel.

What fun reading this book was. I admit, when it came time to buckle down and read it I looked at the whopping 480 pages and was worried it would be a dragged out read. That’s pretty long for YA and oftentimes when I tackle a book like this it suffers from a lot of pacing issues that drive me crazy. That wasn’t the case with Mila 2.0 at all, in fact I had so much fun reading this that I ate it up in 3 small sittings and could have easily read more. A fast pace is set right at the beginning of the novel and it doesn’t let up hardly all the way through. This seriously felt like a Jason Statham movie, the action just keeps coming!

We meet Mila as she has just moved to a small farm town and is dealing with the loss of her father. It’s pretty clear right off the bat that she didn’t make the best of friends. Kaylee was driving me crazy in the beginning! I was so happy that their friendship didn’t last long and that the story moved quickly away from the high school politics presented. As Mila realizes she isn’t who she thinks she is her whole world changes and from then on it’s a high speed chase that keeps you on the edge of your seat.

The people who built Mila want her back and will do anything to get her. As Mila’s “mom” lets her in on all the details of where she came from and how she came to be free I really started to care about the bond these two shared. I liked her mom, I liked her fierceness and her protectiveness of Mila. She was an incredibly smart woman who stood up for what she believed in no matter the cost. One bond that I didn’t really connect with was that between Mila and Hunter. They meet at school and go on one date and he became someone that Mila thought about often and dreaded leaving. I don’t think there was enough substance to make me fully buy into her need for him but I do hope that gets much more developed in the next book.

I’m actually having a really hard time writing this review because all I want to talk about is how much fun I had reading it. There are so many chase scenes and just being in Mila’s head as she learns who she is and how she functions was awesome. She is also pretty funny, oftentimes her inner dialogue and shock at the things she didn’t know she was capable of achieving were so well placed that I found myself chuckling a lot. On the flip side there is also some very serious moments in the novel and at those times the tension had me almost to the point of holding my breath (though I totally would have known that I was doing it, it wouldn’t have been a breath I didn’t know I was holding. Happy we cleared that up.) Some of what Mila has to endure and dish out is super intense.

Mila 2.0 had a bit of everything going for it; intensity, humour, a great “mother/daughter” relationship, and copious amounts of action. I definitely recommend getting started on this series and I think Driza is definitely a debut author to watch. I can’t wait to continue on with this series!