Review: Origin by Jessica Khoury

I was so excited to read Origin that I pre-ordered it. I'd never read anything of Jessica Khoury's before (this is her debut), and I took a leap of faith. However, that leap paid off.

I got to meet Jessica at this year's Decatur Book Festival in Decatur, Georgia. (Decatur is a suburb of Atlanta.) Unfortunately, the book festival took place the weekend before Origin's pub date. But due to the staff of Little Shop of Stories, there were early copies available to festival attendees.

After a quick negotiation with my mother regarding cost, she allowed me to buy one of the early copies, and I started reading it before Jessica's panel began. Each of the authors on the panel could have easily had their own event, so it felt like it was only a few minutes later when we were queuing up for the signing portion.

I got to talk to Jessica very briefly about how I was liking Origin thus far, and after she signed my book, she posed for a picture. (Also, at the risk of sounding totally creepy, her little sisters were hanging around, and they are ADORABLE.)

From left: me, Z, and Sister, with Jessica in front of us.

I finished Origin the next day, and I was AMAZED at how much I loved it. (I think half the reason I love it so much is because there are no sequels.) Pia was such a good representation of a teenager -- despite the fact that she's more than human -- and besides that, she was smart and powerful and emotionally strong.

Most of what I predicted while reading Origin didn't happen, and for that I was glad.I've mentioned before how much I like to be surprised while reading, which definitely happened during my reading of this book.

It's so hard for me to satisfactorily tell people why I love Origin, without throwing major spoilers all over the place, but I think it boils down to these three points:

• Pia is a fully realized, fallible, flawed narrator.
• Origin tells its own story -- it's a standalone, and relies on nothing else. It has to be complete, or it falls apart.
• The plot has dribbles of both sci-fi and fantasy, without being so enmeshed in either as to alienate casual readers.

I wish I had thought to get an extra copy signed so I could do a giveaway... but I didn't. So I'll just have to tell you (very VERY enthusiastically) to go buy your own copy or check it out of your local library. Oh, and follow Jessica on Pinterest, because she has awesome pins. (That's actually how I found out about her book, but that's another story.)

Description from jacket flap:

The jungle hides a girl who cannot die.

Pia has grown up in a secret laboratory hidden deep in the Amazon rain forest. She was raised by a team of scientists who have created her to be the start of a new immortal race. But on the night of her seventeenth birthday, Pia discovers a hole in the electric fence that surrounds her sterile home--and sneaks outside the compound for the first time in her life.

Free in the jungle, Pia meets Eio, a boy from a nearby village. Together, they embark on a race against time to discover the truth about Pia's origin--a truth with deadly consequences that will change their lives forever. Origin is a beautifully told, shocking new way to look at an age-old desire: to live forever, no matter the cost.