Heartless
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
In a contemporary take on the Frankenstein tale, Jolene Hall is dead – sort of. She can walk, think and talk, but her heart no longer beats. After being abducted and subjected to horrific experiments, Jo wakes up to find her body is a mosaic of jagged wounds and stapled flesh. Jo has a choice: go to the authorities, or team with her best friend Lucy and boyfriend Eli to save herself.
She wants to know who turned her into a monster, and live to see another sunrise. On a trip deep into the snowy White Mountains, to a hidden laboratory filled with bodies of the dead, Jo and Lucy find more ‘creatures’ just like her. Part body, part machine, run by batteries and electricity, these girls are killers, created by a shadowy Order with a penchant for chaos…and murder. To make matters worse, a photo on a wall of victims reveals Lucy is next in line to be "recruited” into this army When Jo’s physical condition takes a turn for the worse, and the and the Order kidnaps those she loves most, saving her best friend and the man she loves might just mean sacrificing herself...or what’s left of her.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
After an angry breakup with her boyfriend, 19-year-old Jo Hall blacks out and wakes up on a gurney, surrounded by dead girls. She manages to free herself and trek through the Colorado snow back to her college dorm. Oddly, she can't feel the cold, and she soon realizes the full horror of her condition: chalky skin, dehydrated flesh, a scarred torso "held together by rusted silver staples," and oozing green goo. Jo looks dead, must be electrically charged to keep from running down, and is falling apart, physically and mentally. She sets out to find out who is responsible for a condition she hopes is reversible with the enthusiastic help of best friend Lucy and ex-boyfriend Eli. More Scooby-Doo than Mary Shelley, the novel's frequent attempts at dark humor fall flat ("He's always had a sensitive stomach," quips Jo when Eli vomits after learning she's undead), and readers will likely spot the villains a mile away. Newcomer Rhyne has created a sympathetic heroine dealing with some serious body horror, but muddled motivations and predictable hijinks mar this awkward homage to Frankenstein. Ages 13 up.
