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Your One & Only by Adrianne Finlay
Dytopian, science fiction, mystery
HMH Books for Young Readers
February 6, 2018
Hardcover, Kindle
320
Jack is a walking fossil. The only human among a sea of clones. It’s been hundreds of years since humanity died off in the slow plague, leaving the clones behind to carry on human existence. Over time they’ve perfected their genes, moving further away from the imperfections of humanity. But if they really are perfect, why did they create Jack?
While Jack longs for acceptance, Althea-310 struggles with the feeling that she’s different from her sisters. Her fascination with Jack doesn’t help. As Althea and Jack’s connection grows stronger, so does the threat to their lives. What will happen if they do the unthinkable and fall in love?
The perfect book to intellectually engage and stretch YA readers…
Adrianne Finlay, in Your One & Only, takes her readers to a future earth where disease has completely wiped out humans as we know them. In their place are a series of highly modified human clones that meticulously control the creation of each generation of the same original nine clones. Created into this world, from stored genetics, is Jack, a human like those that used to populate the planet. Jack’s awareness of and struggle with his difference is explored through life in a colony that values and demands uniformity. But as clones interact with Jack, his oddness opens their minds, especially Althea-310, to their latent humanity,
I’m not trying to get philosophical but there is really something to be said for pondering the bigger questions in life; like what it means to be human. In the busyness of our everyday existence, with so many forces pulling at us: work, family, social media, relationships, there never seems to be enough time to stop and think about the things that make us so unique. Failing to do so, causes us to lose touch of what makes us human and makes us more likely to focus on our differences instead of our shared humanity. Finlay provides the impetus to do just that.
Your One & Only would make a great reading assignment and discussion topic in a classroom setting. Finlay does a fabulous job of not only entertaining her readers with an intriguing story and engaging writing style but she challenges their imaginations and beliefs, making them stop and think through not only the significance of things but its viability. For example, the clones are from nine specific humans. Their genes have been modified to make the clones immune to disease and better functioning yet they do not feel or act like humans, with their group think and sterile emotions. Does this mean that the essence of what it means to be a human, or as some would call a soul, is not recreated in clones? It is questions like this that will totally entrap your thoughts and make you go “hmmm”.
Your One & Only, by Adrianne Finlay is an engaging and thought-provoking read for all ages!
Tanya’s love for books has been a lifelong passion that she likes sharing with others. Reading is also the thing that relaxes her after a day of juggling the many responsibilities that come with being being wife to an amazing man, mother to four great kids spread around the world, business manager, and farm hand on their place in southwest Missouri; home to Akaushi cattle and a menagerie of pygmy goats, horses, chickens, dogs and cats.