Review: Altered by Jennifer Rush

Altered (Altered #1) by Jennifer Rush
January 1st, 2013 · Little Brown
Source: Purchased
Format: Hardcover
Page Count: 323

When you can’t trust yourself, who can you believe?

Everything about Anna’s life is a secret. Her father works for the Branch at the helm of its latest project: monitoring and administering treatments to the four genetically altered boys in the lab below their farmhouse. There’s Nick, Cas, Trev . . . and Sam, who’s stolen Anna’s heart. When the Branch decides it’s time to take the boys, Sam stages an escape, killing the agents sent to retrieve them.

Anna is torn between following Sam or staying behind in the safety of her everyday life. But her father pushes her to flee, making Sam promise to keep her away from the Branch, at all costs. There’s just one problem. Sam and the boys don’t remember anything before living in the lab—not even their true identities.

Now on the run, Anna soon discovers that she and Sam are connected in more ways than either of them expected. And if they’re both going to survive, they must piece together the clues of their past before the Branch catches up to them and steals it all away.

Upon finding out about Altered, I was so excited to read it and while my initial expectations weren’t met, it was nonetheless a fun story and start to a new series.

I loved the boys and in a way they reminded me of the Merrick brothers (from the Elemental series by Brigid Kemmerer), with their playful banter and the fact that they have each other’s backs like brothers. Considering everything they’ve been through together, it’s no wonder they share such a close bond and have become like a family. They were my favourite aspect of the story but having said that, I really wish they could have made me swoon, made an impact on my heart and left me in a pickle over which guy was my favourite. I mean, take advantage of the hotness; don’t waste it!

Cas stood out a bit like a sore thumb; you have Sam, the love interest, Trev, the best friend and Nick who hates Anna’s guts so the fact that he wasn’t ‘labeled’ felt a bit odd. Nonetheless, I liked his character and by the end I’d started to see him less as the unlabelled one and just Cas.

I didn’t feel the relationship between Anna and Sam as it felt forced and for an action-packed novel, my heart just wasn’t in it. However, the good news is that as the story progressed, I started to warm to their relationship and enjoy the action more so all in all, while a few aspects started out on shaky ground, things eventually picked up, especially as the ending drew closer.

Altered is not without its flaws and while I’m still on the fence whether I’ll be reading the sequel Erased or not, for the most part, this is a pretty entertaining, enjoyable read, just don’t go in expecting too much.

3/5