The Similars (Similars, #1)

by Rebecca Hanover

Don't miss the series debut that readers are calling Gossip Girl meets The Umbrella Academy and one of the best boarding school books. At Darkwood Academy, secret societies rule and nothing is as it seems…

This fall, six new students are joining the junior class at the elite Darkwood Academy. But they aren't your regular over-achieving teens. They're DNA duplicates, and these "similars" are joining the class alongside their originals.

The Similars are all anyone can talk about. Who are they? What are the odds that all of them would be Darkwood students? And who is the madman who broke the law to create them? Emmaline Chance could care less. Her best friend, Oliver, died over the summer and it's all she can do to get through each day without him. Then she comes face-to-heartbreaking-face with Levi, Oliver's exact DNA copy and one of the Similars.

Emma wants nothing to do with the Similars, but she keeps getting pulled deeper into their world. She can't escape the dark truths about them or her prestigious school. No one can be trusted, not even the boy she is falling for with Oliver's face.

This exhilarating and riveting debut by Rebecca Hanover is the next obsession for readers who devoured One of Us Is Lying, Tell Me Three Things, Scythe, and Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful.

• ISBN13: 9781492665106
• Publish Date: 1 January 2019
• Publish Status: Unknown
• Imprint: Sourcebooks Fire
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 400
• Language: English

Reviews

[Sophia]

Warning: spoiler-ish

I really don't know how to feel about this one. I wanted to like it and the plot is really intriguing, but it was just not written particularly well.

Good bits:
- Exciting plot!
- Great plot twist at the end, I saw one coming but definitely not the other.
- Despite its flaws, it was gripping and I stuck around to see what happened.

Bad bits:
- Oh good god the CHARACTERS. I feel like none of them had any real personality, even Emma. They act ridiculously - there are moments where characters are in danger and the other characters just start talking about something else or MAKE OUT.
- More to the point, Emma is an IDIOT. She knows the clones are up to no good and potentially dangerous and yet she hangs out with them anyway.
- The main romance was contrived and unbelievable.
- The dialogue isn't well written. A lot of it reads like the characters are just there to dump information on the reader.

Despite this, this book was actually quite an enjoyable read. I don't know if I'll read the next book because I don't know if I'll care enough by its release, but I certainly don't regret reading this one.

[Joséphine]

Initial thoughts: I expected more from The Similars. It contains two subjects I adore in novels — clones and boarding schools — and yet, it fell short. I couldn't look past the plot holes and inexplicable circumstances. Secret societies are staples of YA books set at boarding schools but in the case of The Similars, the elite society was supported by the school board. In order to be inducted, one had to be among the top five scorers in an admission test. That's all fine and good but don't tell me the principal has no idea about the hazing practices. I just couldn't suspend my disbelief with this one.

Overall, the plot was entertaining but the transitions between scenes didn't always make sense. Yes, there was supposed to be this air of mystery, what with students being attacked and/or disappearing. The adults in this book just seemed entirely too clueless, given that several of them had been part of the society as teens and apparently benefitted from it as adults. What makes this even stranger is that apart from the occasional midnight meetings, the society didn't actually contribute to the student body. It was just a convenient plot device to explain away the motivations of the villain in this story.