Finding Fiona
The victim of a brutal attack, Fiona remembers little about her life until she meets someone who claims to be from her past. He tells her that her parents were killed for a human replication machine. He’s shocked to discover she’s still alive since her body was found in the wreckage of the fire.
She soon travels to her old home in New York to figure out what happened to her and her family. She needs to find out who she is, but more importantly, confront the men who killed her parents.
This coming-of-age scifi novella is full of mystery, action, and romance. It’s a perfect weekend read.
The concept of Finding Fiona really intrigued me, but as the story developed it didn’t quite meet my expectations. First of all it’s a novella, so I knew going into that it would short and there was the possibility of the story not being as developed as I may prefer. I’ve read other novellas before and was satisfied by the length and compact story. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for Finding Fiona.
Fiona has amnesia, the result an attack that left her burned, bleeding, and left for dead. Three months of the attack she begins to try to put the pieces of her life back together. When she encounters a friend from her past, her memories start coming back to her. Soon she realizes she was involved in something much more dangerous than she ever imagined.
Like I said earlier, I think the story was a very original as it is centered around a revolutionary science experiment. Before her amnesia, Fiona was involved with a human replication project created by her parents. When word of there project became more public a group of scientists wanted in. But when Fiona’s parents wouldn’t let them in on the experiment, they responded violently and tried to take the research by force. However, when you finally learn more about the human replication project, it is brief and little disappointing. Although it is a realistic outcome for a project like this, it was not as cool as I hoped.
The story moved a little too quickly, not allowing for things to fully develop. I don’t really know why a group of nerdy scientists want to hurt Fiona and her family. Their motive isn’t convincing enough for me for them to go through the lengths they did. They killed too easily and when it doesn’t seem necessary. So when the action scenes came into play, I had a hard time taking them seriously.
Additionally, I never made a connection with the characters. I was never pulled into their situation and didn’t care what happened to them. They made decisions that didn’t make sense and more often than not I was just plain frustrated with them.
Overall, I feel Finding Fiona may be a good book for teen looking for quick read. However, I feel many adults would find themselves frustrated with the lack of character development and details that would pull an adult reader into a story. Personally, I cannot recommend this novella but I do encourage teen readers to give it try.
Thank you to Emily Ann Ward for providing a copy of her book to review in exchange for honest review.