"Mila 2.0" by Debra Driza

NOTE: This is an eARC I got from Netgalley.

This is a nicely done piece of work, that takes the reader on an adventure packed with lots of action, sci-fi elements and of course, teen romance. Taking this book in your hands, you better be prepared for a journey of self-discovery, which may or may not take you where you intended to go.

Mila 2.0 started off just as any other book. Girl moves to new town because of some family tragedy. She meets, of course, a boy, a gets attracted to him. But that's where the similarities end. Because Mila really isn't just your average 16 year old girl. No, she's actually an android (an intelligent humanoid robot), who didn't turn out as machine-like as the military had planned. That piece of new information pushed the story into an unstoppable streak of action that continued until the very last chapter.

What impressed me very much was that the author did a very good job incorporating the machine with the human inside one body and mind.

However, there was a huge weakness that I can't just bypass. Every other page (or at least one out of three pages) had to do with Mila's inner struggles of how she wasn't truly a human. Now, don't get me wrong, I get it. At least I think I do since I don't have the actual experience. The girl had all the human traits you and I have. Then all of a sudden she finds out that all of that just doesn't matter in the least. She eats - so what? She cries - so what? She loves - whatever! None of that matters. All the emotions and bodily functions in the world won't take the machine out of her.
Surely, if I found out the same thing was true about me, I'd probably react the same way - denial, hurt, disbelief, yada, yada...

But, there's just a certain limit for all that, which a reader's mind can take. The constant repetition of how sad and angry Mila was that she wasn't an actual human; the continuous denial of her functionalities... it just nagged at me so much! Every time Mila went on a streak of self-loathing, self-wallowing etc., it irritated me to death. Because of all those countless repetitive paragraphs, I wanted this book to just end somewhere and release me from the torture.

In relation to that, I also want to say that this story could've very well been squeezed into less than 400 pages. It was just too long for a debut, series start and a teen book. I was ready to put it down about half-way through.

I won't say more, because it's hard to keep this review spoiler-free as it is.

In conclusion, Mila 2.0 isn't a bad book. It's actually a good one, if you have the patience to pass through all the repetitions. Enjoy!

My rating is