I had high hopes for Replica -- it has a cool premise and a was written by an author whose YA books I have enjoyed, but I'm sad to say I didn't love it.First off, I think Replica would have worked much better if it had been written and categorized as adult fiction. Yes, Nadia and Nate -- the two POV characters -- are supposed to be sixteen, but they act and operate as if they are much older. They don't go to school, they don't have any obvious parental supervision, they go clubbing and do whatever they want without answering to anyone. They're rich and privileged -- Nate is next in line to rule Paxco, some kind of corporate state. They're also engaged. But there's a small problem with their relationship (above and beyond the fact that they're engaged at sixteen!) Nate is gay (this isn't a spoiler; it's revealed at the beginning of the book) and Nadia has agreed to pretend to be in a romantic relationship with him. One night, after Nate sneaks off for a tryst, he turns up dead. After Nate's rich parents clone him, Clone Nate and Nadia try to find the missing lover and solve Nate's murder.That sounds interesting as I type it, and I felt like this could have been a very cool futuristic story like D.O.A. (1950s film noir about guy solving his own murder.) But for me, this was a case where the execution didn't match the coolness of the premise. I never felt engaged in the mystery and never really felt any connection to either Nadia or Nate. I thought one of the main problems of the story was Nadia. She was incredibly bland, despite the fact that the story gives her a head cold and some mean girl tormentors in an attempt to make her more sympathetic.As I read, I kept wanting more: more suspense, more drama, more romance, more something. I thought maybe some romantic tension would arise -- that Nadia would find a new guy and take up with him in secret. There was a hint of that later on, but came too late to make a difference for me. Again, I think that as an adult or NA book with the freedom to be more daring and edgy in the sex and violence department, this book might have been much more compelling. As a story about two sixteen year olds solving a murder, it just never got off the ground for me.
