Title: Perfected
Author: Kate Jarvik Birch
Publisher/Year: Entangled Publishing 7/1/14
Length:   197 Pages
Series:  Perfected #1

Overview

Perfection comes at a price.

As soon as the government passed legislation allowing humans to be genetically engineered and sold as pets, the rich and powerful rushed to own beautiful girls like Ella. Trained from birth to be graceful, demure, and above all, perfect, these “family companions” enter their masters’ homes prepared to live a life of idle luxury.

Ella is happy with her new role as playmate for a congressman’s bubbly young daughter, but she doesn’t expect Penn, the congressman’s handsome and rebellious son. He’s the only person who sees beyond the perfect exterior to the girl within. Falling for him goes against every rule she knows…and the freedom she finds with him is intoxicating.

But when Ella is kidnapped and thrust into the dark underworld lurking beneath her pampered life, she’s faced with an unthinkable choice. Because the only thing more dangerous than staying with Penn’s family is leaving…and if she’s unsuccessful, she’ll face a fate far worse than death.

My Thoughts

To be honest, I’m not even sure what i’m reading about here – or the point in time that we’re at.  There was a snippet that said ‘if you like Matched or Chemical Garden you’d like this’ and while i get where the similarities are being drawn, they are all quite different from one another and even from this series.

So as the summary here says, we’re living in an era where legislation has been passed to allow people to have pets in the form of girls.  These girls have been genetically engineered and grown and trained to be petite, beautiful and the perfect pet.  We meet Ella at the onset of this story – where she has completed her four years of training and is up for auction to be purchased as a pet.  In her mind, she’s fulfilling her duty and she’s excited to do so, but of course, what she’s been trained to expect is completely different than life itself.

She’s purchased by a congressman, the one in fact who’s passed the law, and living in his home is an interesting experience for her.  She’s rendered a bit uncomfortable by him given that he’s paying her attention in a way that’s not known, and his wife seems to hate her.  The children in the home are a different story and we see how that plays out.  In addition to that adjustment, it seems like the lessons that Ella was taught in terms of how to conduct herself, how to talk to the owners etc, is so far off from what life expects that she’s really out of her element.

Throughout this story what we have here is a tale of a girl learning to be herself, and understand what she is and what makes her happy when all she’s been taught to do is please others.  Ella really just wants to play the piano, and find happiness and love with others, but of course as a pet, one that some love and some abhor,

In learning more and more about Ella, we also get to be a bit closer to Ruby, the congressman’s daughter who really just wants a friend. she’s not the most popular little girl and having Ella is something that means a lot to her.  We also meet Penn, the son, and his relationship with his family is one that’s troublesome since he wants to do what makes him happy yet that’s contradictory to what his father wants.  With the introduction of Ella, things get to be even more complicated since they find that there’s a bond, something really special there that keeps drawing them together even though they both know that it’s a bad idea.

Where this story takes us from there is a quest for freedom, to be allowed to be happy doing whatever it is that you want, and to not have to fear every move that you make.  There’s reason for an escape attempt or two for Ella and others, and where we are left at the end of this first installment is seeing freedom almost granted for one and lost for another.  I think there’s so much more to come out of this series, so perhaps book 2 will give us that depth.  To be honest, i think that’s the biggest thing that i’m missing here – on the surface it’s a sweet book but i don’t know that we get too deep into any fragment of the story and those are often the best pieces.  So on that note – i hope you guys give it a try and enjoy!