Everyone knows which two things in life are inevitable – death and taxes. But what if death wasn’t inevitable? What if you could live several lives? Would you act differently knowing you might be able to come back? Would you, maybe, take more risks?
As a little girl, Daisy Appleby was killed in a school bus crash. Moments after the accident, she was brought back to life.
A secret government agency has developed a drug called Revive that can bring people back from the dead, and Daisy Appleby, a test subject, has been Revived five times in fifteen years. Daisy takes extraordinary risks, knowing that she can beat death, but each new death also means a new name, a new city, and a new life. When she meets Matt McKean, Daisy begins to question the moral implications of Revive, and as she discovers the agency’s true goals, she realizes she’s at the center of something much larger — and more sinister — than she ever imagined.
Daisy takes on several last names over the course of this book, but for identification purposes let’s call her Daisy Appleby. It’s not her real name, but it’s the first one used in reference to her, so it’s the one I tend to associate with her. Daisy has been in a secret government project, titled Revive, for the drug, for the past eleven years. She didn’t ask to be a part of the project, but she was chosen and survived the treatment, so she became a part of it regardless. When we meet Daisy, she’s dying. In fact, she does die. It’s not pretty and it’s not elegant, but it happens. It’s happened four times to Daisy and she remembers each time. We don’t get all the specifics, but it’s enough to make you wonder if a company somewhere is developing this drug already and no one knows about it yet.
With each death, Daisy and her ‘handlers’, the agents who pose as her parents, must move and change their last name. At her new school, she meets and befriends a girl named Audrey. Audrey is her first real friend outside the program and I think finally having a tie to where she lives, a tie to the people who don’t know about Revive, starts making her question her life and what was done to her. Daisy doesn’t make some good choices, basically she does something I rant about in my notes that will ‘blow up in her face’, but because she’s a fictional character and I didn’t write the book, she does it anyway. And it does, in fact, blow up in her face.
The ensuing events that take place after the bad decisions start Daisy on the path to finding out more about the program, about herself, and the man behind everything than she ever wanted to know. In retrospect, I wonder if she would’ve done things differently. If she’d taken the safe route, things would not have changed so dramatically. Or maybe they would have. I guess we’ll never really know.
I really liked Daisy and Mason’s relationship. I also liked Matt and how Cat described hers and Matt’s connection. It was cute and fun and reminded me of my first love, of how consuming they are to you and how aware you are of every move they make. The first kiss was sigh-worthy and the small ways they would touch, like a bump of the shoulders or a small caress of the hand, made me smile fondly in remembrance of when those used to be monumental moments in time.
Overall, this was an interesting read. I wish Cat had gone into the science of Revive more, but I understand why she didn’t. It wasn’t about the program, but about Daisy. This is another standalone book, (I seem to be drawn to them recently), so we get answers and a conclusion, even though it could have easily been turned into a series. I marked it as science fiction, but really, it reads more like a contemporary teen book with a touch of science fiction to it.
Revived comes out May 8th through Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. This is the second book Cat Patrick has written and the first I’ve read from her. I have Forgotten, her debut novel, and look forward to reading it after enjoying this one so much.