The Similars by Rebecca Hanover follows Emmaline Chance as she begins another school year at a prestigious boarding school While battling the recent loss of her best friend Oliver. When Emmaline returns to school, she faces The Similars, who are illegal exact DNA clones of their originals who are students at Darkwood Academy. Emmaline’s grief over her late friend only gets worse when she meets Levi, Oliver’s Similar. With the introduction of The Similars violent attacks begin to take place on their originals and Emmaline is forced to band with The Similars to discover what is truly taking place at Darkwood Academy.
I truly enjoyed this book. The plot was rich and interesting and the characters had so much depth that you only uncover as the story goes on and Emmaline gets to know them. The world-building was well executed and never felt too much. the author had a way of revealing things slowly so it was never overwhelming and really brought you into the story. While the story deals with heavy topics such as grief, addiction, and violence the author still makes it feel like these characters are teenagers. The characters are never making the smartest decisions with perfect reasoning or focusing all their efforts on one thing because, in the end, they are still supposed to be teenagers. The author does a great job of adding unnecessary details to make sure that these do still feel like teenagers such as hazing, petty arguments, trivial beauty standards, mindless bickering, and sarcastic humor. I think that while these things are unnecessary to the plot they really add to the richness of the story.
While Rebecca Hanover does a great job of writing a story with great depth and characters there were still some things that I wish were talked about more in the story. It is stated from the beginning that Emmalime is heavily grieving the loss of her best friend and is abusing sleeping pills to cope. I felt like after a while of being angry at Levi for just existing Emmaline fell too quickly for him. I am not sure if this is because the author intended for it to be a familiar face so it should give her the same feelings or if the jump from enemies to lovers was glossed over to accentuate the plot. I also wish the grief and addiction were talked about or carried further into the book. I felt like after the recent death of someone so important you don’t just magically feel better and I felt as though simply flushing the pills wouldn’t have been the end of the addiction struggles.
I think this book has the potential to appeal to a broad audience. it is a Sci-fi book as well as a murder mystery. I think it is geared more towards older teens due to the heavy topics and violence but I felt like the book could be enjoyed by whoever wanted to read it.