The tagline for What’s Left of Me was Never Let Me Go meets His Dark Materials and while I wasn’t reminded of Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, What’s Left of Me is still a powerful and well-written novel. In a world where people are born with two souls and the recessive soul is supposed to be repressed, fifteen-year-old Addie still has her recessive soul, Eva, inside of her. Addie is technically a hybrid but all hybrids are taken away and never heard from again, so she’s been hiding the fact that she’s never settled. Eva’s held onto Addie dearly so when a classmate of Addie’s mentions that there’s a way for Eva to move again in their shared body, Eva jumps at the chance, even with the threat of deportation and never seeing her family again. (In the words of Taylor Swift, “All I knew this morning when I woke/Is I know something now, know something now I didn’t before.”)
It’s refreshing for me to read a YA novel where the story isn’t about romance. There’s a tad bit of romance in What’s Left of Me, barely any, really and it’s fine because this was Addie and Eva’s story not Addie-Eva-and-their-romantic-interests. Another plus was the fact that Addie and Eva are strong, independent characters who don’t need no man. Hell yeah!