Crashed: Skinned Book 2 Review

 Title: Crashed 
Series: Skinned Book 2 
Author: Robin Wasserman 
Pages: 440 
Publisher: Simon Pulse 
Publication Date: September 8, 2009 
My Edition: Hardback 
Reading Level: Young Adult 
Genre: Dystopian 
Received From: Christmas Gift from Amazon 

Summary from Robin's website: 

No one to trust... everything to lose.

Before the accident, Lia Kahn was happy.

Before the accident, Lia Kahn was loved.

Before, Lia was a lot of things: Normal. Alive. Human.

Lia no longer lives in before. Six months after the crash that killed her, six months after being reborn, Lia has finally accepted her new reality. She is a machine, a mech, and she belongs with her own kind. It’s a wild, carefree life, without rules and without fear. Because there’s nothing to fear when you have nothing left to lose.

But when a voice from her past cries out for revenge, everything changes. Lia is forced to choose: between her old life and her new one. Between humans and mechs. Between sacrificing the girl she used to be and saving the boy she used to love. Even if it means he’ll hate her forever.

Review:

Crashed was an amazing addition to the Skinned trilogy. It was a lot different than Skinned but was a lot more action-packed with a touch of romance. Lia just left her family to live with the other mechs, since her family and friends no longer accept her or understand what she is now. The main plot was focused on the "orgs" against the "mechs" and was very interesting to learn how much the orgs hate the mechs because they shouldn't exist. The concept is very unique and very cool to read.

I love the original characters and the dystopian society with lots of new technology. Lia is a great, strong, developed character. She may technically be "dead" but her brain and mind was uploaded to a technology-made body. The relationship between all the characters was pretty tense until finally at the end things started to change. Towards the end, Lia starts to trust and become friends with some of her fellow mechs. All the mechs have their own past which is haunting many of the characters even in their new and different bodies. Even some romance brews between Lia and another mech which was a nice change from all the tension and fighting.

Crashed was pretty long but was very fast-paced & exciting. I'm really looking forward to the final book of the trilogy, Wired (out summer 2010), to find out what will happen to Lia and the other mechs. I enjoy the writing style of Robin Wasserman and highly recommend reading Skinned if you haven't already then Crashed!

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