Altered by Jennifer Rush

Altered #1

     When you can’t trust yourself, who can you believe?

Everything about Anna’s life is a secret. Her father works for the Branch at the helm of its latest project: monitoring and administering treatments to the four genetically altered boys in the lab below their farmhouse. There’s Nick, Cas, Trev . . . and Sam, who’s stolen Anna’s heart.

     When the Branch decides it’s time to take the boys, Sam stages an escape, killing the agents sent to retrieve them. Anna is torn between following Sam or staying behind in the safety of her everyday life. But her father pushes her to go, making Sam promise to keep her away from the Branch, at all costs. There’s just one problem. Sam and the boys don’t remember anything before living in the lab—not even their true identities.

     Now on the run, Anna soon discovers that she and Sam are connected in more ways than either of them expected. And if they’re both going to survive, they must piece together the clues of their past before the Branch catches up to them and steals it all away.

This book is interesting. Not 100% if it's in a good way, bad way or just weird way. It is certainly different than other books that I would put in this genre. Not exactly dystopian, possibly futuristic, secret government branch, espionage. It has many intriguing aspects that aren't in many YA books.

Sam and Anna's relationship is a little strange. Her "love" for him seems to be biased more on the experiments than actual deep feelings. At least it seemed that way to me. I read the prequel novella before I read this and there was nothing that indicated that Dani and Sam were ever going to fall in love. She saw him once walking down the hall and thought he was hot and wanted to see him naked. That was their only interaction. Then he "falls in love" with her little sister, Anna, who was I 10 in the novella which makes Sam possibly 10 years older than her because he is genetically modified he ages slower. (or whatever) So I would assume that would make determining his age hard.

The plot was interesting, I just think the characters ages confused me because I read that ridiculous novella. (which I recommend not doing if you want this book to make a little more sense. The action is fast paced and all the characters are great and diverse. Nick, Sam, Cas, Trev. all are great characters with different personalities. (I know Sam is supposed to be the Male Protag. But Nick is my favorite)

While I found some of the plot devices weird, I really love this book and I think it's a great start to the series. Highly recommend it.