Early Book Review: Expiration Day

Author: William Campbell Powell

Publication Date: April 22, 2014

Publisher: Tor Teen

What happens when you turn eighteen and there are no more tomorrows?
It is the year 2049, and humanity is on the brink of extinction….

Tania Deeley has always been told that she’s a rarity: a human child in a world where most children are sophisticated androids manufactured by Oxted Corporation. When a decline in global fertility ensued, it was the creation of these near-perfect human copies called teknoids that helped to prevent the utter collapse of society.

Though she has always been aware of the existence of teknoids, it is not until her first day at The Lady Maud High School for Girls that Tania realizes that her best friend, Siân, may be one. Returning home from the summer holiday, she is shocked by how much Siân has changed. Is it possible that these changes were engineered by Oxted? And if Siân could be a teknoid, how many others in Tania’s life are not real?

Driven by the need to understand what sets teknoids apart from their human counterparts, Tania begins to seek answers. But time is running out. For everyone knows that on their eighteenth “birthdays,” teknoids must be returned to Oxted—never to be heard from again.

All the other kids in the world are just robots.

And my heart leaped as he replied, “Yes, I am real.”

I think there are one or two things I still want to keep secret from you, at least for the time being.

Tania is a rare specimen of her world, being one of the few humans left, and she always knew her life would be different because of that fact. Many humans became infertile after the year 2010, and were then allowed to “borrow” a teknoid, cyborg, to serve as their child for eighteen years before they were then forced to return the teknoid to the government. After an unfortunate accident, Tania soon discovers that her parents only made her believe that she was human, when in fact she is a teknoid as well. She knows about the awful stories, that once a teknoid is returned they are never seen or heard from again. Tania soon realizes that her life has a fast approaching expiration day!

The story, a debut I might add, is told through Tania’s diary entries. This is not your average young adult novel, but is instead something new and daring, and quite frankly a breath of fresh air. This is about Tania’s struggle to understand who or what she is and how she fits into this life that has suddenly shifted from what she once thought it was. The story had many exciting twists and turns. The society that Tania lived in was very interesting, and was far different from a lot of books I have been reading lately. If you are in the mood for a change of pace or scenery, you should definitely try this book out.

This was a change for me because this is not normally something I pick up on a day to day basis. However, it was a nice, refreshing change and I loved everything about the book except the world building. I thought it was lacking at times, but this is after all a debut and of course the author has to have some room to improve!

***A free copy of this book was provided to me by the publishers at Tor Teen in exchange for my honest review***