Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.Īutumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart their mothers are still best friends. A surfeit of casual violence detracts from the ending, but this debut’s strengths-pacing and plot twists, especially-outweigh the deficits. In the desperate race to find answers before the Branch agents find them, Anna clings to what she knows is true: her love for Sam. With no memory of life before the farmhouse and few clues to guide them to safety, their quest to understand what has happened to them yields fewer answers than questions, especially for Anna, whose own memories increasingly appear suspect. Urged by her dad, the boys take Anna with them. She knows the boys are human lab rats in a project run by the Branch, a private company funded by the government, and dreams of freeing them, but it’s Sam who masterminds their escape when Branch agents show up to end the project. Though Anna’s attached to the boys, even sullen Nick, Sam is the one she sneaks down to see at night.

Home-schooled Anna is isolated, too, her mother’s treasured, annotated cookbook their only connection. Downstairs, the four surgically altered boys whom Anna has tended and her dad has studied for five years live in comfortable, isolated cells. In the farmhouse upstairs, Anna and her widower dad lead a quiet life. Ignore the shaky start-within minutes, this medical-engineering thriller will have readers glued to their seats.

Altered by Jennifer Rush