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Addie and Eva have shared a body as hybrid souls since birth. In their society, being hybrid is fairly common, but usually by the time hybrids are about seven or eight years old, they have “settled,” or one has simply faded away, leaving just one soul in one body. But sometimes souls don’t settle, and this is the case for teens Addie and Eva. Naturally, because this is a dystopian young adult novel, they’re not settling is a huge cause for concern and a situation that the government considers dangerous. Kids are usually shipped off to institutions for holding, for treatment, for attempts at “cures.”
Since the first book, What’s Left of Me, Addie and Eva have been caught up in the resistance movement, which mostly seeks to protect hybrids and hide them, but it has been aiming more at change, at showing the country that hybrids aren’t “crazy” or a danger.
At the start of Echoes of Us, Addie and Eva are hiding in safe houses, but Addie is missing the boy she’s fallen for, Jackson, who had been captured in the middle book, Once We Were. When a reporter somehow tracks down the safe house where they’re hiding and suggests a plan that can show the world how badly the government is treating institutionalized hybrids, Eva and Addie decide to go along with it because the reporter says she can help them free Jackson.
Going into the institution is truly a frightening prospect, but the footage they could capture would be gold for the resistance movement. The plan is simple but hardly foolproof.
This conclusion to the series is interesting and fitting. The series hasn’t been an edge-of-your-seat action story; it’s not The Hunger Games, all fighting and maneuvering and high-octane thrills. It’s more introspective, about two girls who just would like to lead a normal life but who do their part to make a difference. They aren’t THE face of the movement, but a part of it. They think, they consider, they hope, they take some action. They quietly love. Nicest for readers, Kat Zhang creates all this in a clean context, too.
Rated: Mild, for just a few uses of mild language and a few uses of the name of deity; some violence but nothing graphic; no sexual content, just a few references to kissing.
