The Body Electric

Author: Beth Revis

Pages: 482

Publisher: Scripturient Books

Published on: October 6th 2014

The future world is at peace.

Ella Shepherd has dedicated her life to using her unique gift—the ability to enter people’s dreams and memories using technology developed by her mother—to help others relive their happy memories.

But not all is at it seems.

Ella starts seeing impossible things—images of her dead father, warnings of who she cannot trust. Her government recruits her to spy on a rebel group, using her ability to experience—and influence—the memories of traitors. But the leader of the rebels claims they used to be in love—even though Ella’s never met him before in her life. Which can only mean one thing…

Someone’s altered her memory.

Ella’s gift is enough to overthrow a corrupt government or crush a growing rebel group. She is the key to stopping a war she didn’t even know was happening. But if someone else has been inside Ella’s head, she cannot trust her own memories, thoughts, or feelings.

So who can she trust?

I got this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review and honest thoughts on the book.

And this is the moment where I am ashamed to the fact that I haven’t read any other book by Beth other than this one. This book’s plot was so great and very well written. There was also ways stuff going on in this book and if there wasn’t a moment where I wanted to keep reading…then I was probably half awake at 11 on a school night. The characters in this book were also very interesting to read about since the world they live in is kind of like ours but also isn’t very similar.

Let’s just get straight into my thoughts of this book because I cannot wait to spill anymore. Jack! Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack. I knew this guy was important but I didn’t suspect he would have been dating Ella in her past life. It’s funny to think that a lot of this story wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for him. I mean he is only part of a rebellion and dated Ella right? (Note sarcasm) What was kind of scary was during the ending when Ms. White was controlling him, no one suspected him to be a bot-like-people and how he acted so different was just scary to think about. Then we have Ella losing all memory of Jack. At first nothing made sense of why she would have all remaining memory of everything except Jack. Then when Ella is that reverie it all makes sense on how she was the one who took her memories out of Jack. It even makes more sense after the scene with the android and how she was programmed to react in a certain way when a threat of “harm” would come to her. Like the book said, that’s why Ella punched Jack when she first say him again.

Then we have Ms. White, the true villain in this book. I was very surprised to find she was the real bad guy in this book just because she has the ability to control all bot-like-people, with what? Her mind? She controlled Jack, PA Young, Alikah and so many bot-like-people. It makes me think she was the who had all the androids explode. I had to remember that Ms. White was also the one that killed Ella in the first place and literally force Ella to erase her memories of Jack. The fact that she was so close to Ella’s family was really scary because they got the most damage from her.

Something I really liked about the world in this book was the reveries. It’s so weird that you can go into someone’s happiest memories because there have been books with things like this. For example, Divergent. the simulations are your fears. The reveries are your happiest memories. And reveries also transport memories from one person to another; and Ella was one of those people. Believe me, I was pretty shocked when I read that part where they were in the lab and they found the frozen rooms with her name on it. That, was pretty scary and I could not believe it even though the people that have been dead and were bit-like-people. I guess that’s what happens when you’re parents are scientists.

The ending fight in this book was a bit over powered. It was basically a whole bunch of androids against a girl who was an bot-like-girl. Of course she fought through Ms.White grasp and that was pretty cool, but in the end, an over powered fight is never fun to read about. By the end of the fight, it was basically just Ella alone in the fight because well, Jack was being controlled by Ms.White. Maybe if Ella had Jack with her during the whole fight or have someone else fight with her. It was also really cook how she took the grasp Ms.White had on all the bots and destroyed the connection.