Review: Altered by Jennifer Rush

Pages: 336

Published: January 1st 2013
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

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 flee, 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.

Altered was a fantastic read. Before I read this, I went to two of my go to bloggers, and they had both posted reviews the same day for this. One ADORED it and the other one said it didn't meet her expectations. That said, I went into it a bit weary because I hadn't even planned on reading it in the first place, but it blew me out of the water.

The plot revolves around the main girl, whose father works for a secret government program called The Branch. Years before, she discovers that her father has these four teenage guys in the basement of their house in a lab. They somehow manage to escape and Anna gets thrown into the mix along with the. From here, it really picks up. It's part insane road trip, part intense mystery. From the very beginning the pacing is quick and keeps the reader engaged wondering what will happen next. It's action packed and filled with bad ass characters. I fell in love with these four boys and their different personalities and loved how protective they were of each other. They were all so different but came together almost as brothers.

Nick is the angry, angsty one that doesn't trust anyone or anything but comes through when you most need him. Travis is the smart, quiet type, and also Anna's best friend from the group. He's the one who takes her feelings more into account when things happen. There's also Cas, he's the funny, goofy one, and my personal favorite. Every time he opened his mouth I found myself cheesily smiling and laughing. Finally we have Sam, the leader of the group, and of course the one Anna finds herself falling for. I was worried I would have issues with their relationship but it made sense to me. Anna has basically grown up with these boys, so it only made sense that she would fall for one of them. At first, to me Anna was an okay character, typical young adult girl went along with what others said most of the time. But she developed throughout. As secrets were revealed, you could really see Anna growing into her own person. By the end, I felt attached to every single one of the characters and my emotions suffered greatly because of it.

When I picked this up I wasn't sure what to expect but it surprised me with it's mystery element. There were so many twists that kept me attached to the pages. The action scenes were very well done and I found them replaying in my head like scenes from a movie. While it's difficult to catch me off guard I can say that Jennifer did it. There were clues you had to follow and it was fun to try to solve the mystery along with Anna and the boys. Without knowing it, a sci-fi thriller/ mystery was just what I needed at the moment. I can't wait to see what Jennifer Rush has in store for us next.

Rating: 5/5