I have to get a few things out of the way before I start this book review. 1. While I adore fairy tale retellings, I have never enjoyed the story of Cinderella. I didn’t love the idea of a girl just hoping and waiting for outside influences to change her life. Before this book, that’s all I felt about Cinderella. 2. This book has completely changed my mind. The story of Cinderella is many of centuries old. Yet, Marissa Meyer found a way to reinvent this story into something new and exciting.

In this version, Cinder is a cyborg in futuristic New Beijing. Cyborgs in this world have metal infused into their bodies for medical reasons. Instead of organic transplants, the lower classes have to take metal ones for nerve and muscle replacements. Once a person has one of these transplants, they are seen as part of an even lower class. They are treated as something to be avoided in society. Cinder has been a cyborg for as long as she can remember. She was brought to live with her “family” at the age of 11 and has no memory before then. Her mechanic “Father” traveled to England for work and returned with her to become a part of his family. He is one of the men who worked on her to save her life. Cinder, now 16, works as a mechanic downtown to support her new family after her Father has died from the plague cursing the country. This could be enough to fuel this first book in the Lunar Chronicles.

This author did a great job of altering the old story by Robert Louis Stevenson called, "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and making it a modern day romance! The book alternates between narrations of the two main characters, Jill and Tristen. Jill Jekel and Tristen Hyde fall in love in high school chemistry class. Jill is being raised by a single mom and Tristen is being raised by a single dad. They have a lot in common. It becomes more complicated when Tristen's dad (a psychiatrist) starts treating Jill's mom for depression. Another important character is Jill and Tristen's chemistry teacher who seems to have more than an ordinary fascination with these two young people. This book ends up with a dramatic ending.

Double Identity is a science fiction book about a girl named Bethany. Lately, her parents have been acting weird. Her father is really concerned about her safety and her mom never stops crying. One day her father gets them all in a car and drives them all to an aunt she never even knew existed. They leave her there with not even an emergency phone number. While she is there she encounters a person who thinks Bethany looks familiar, even though she has never seen her before. As more and more unexplained events happen, she is trying to figure it all out and the only hint is about someone named Elizabeth. Since a man keeps following her around she realizes she isn’t the only one trying to figure everything out.
I give this book 4 stars out of five!