ARC Review: Dualed by Elsie Chapman

Dualed
by Elsie Chapman

Series: Dualed #1
Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers
Release Date: February 26th, 2013
Source: Publisher

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You or your Alt? Only one will survive.

The city of Kersh is a safe haven, but the price of safety is high. Everyone has a genetic Alternate—a twin raised by another family—and citizens must prove their worth by eliminating their Alts before their twentieth birthday. Survival means advanced schooling, a good job, marriage—life.

Fifteen-year-old West Grayer has trained as a fighter, preparing for the day when her assignment arrives and she will have one month to hunt down and kill her Alt. But then a tragic misstep shakes West’s confidence. Stricken with grief and guilt, she’s no longer certain that she’s the best version of herself, the version worthy of a future. If she is to have any chance of winning, she must stop running not only from her Alt, but also from love . . . though both have the power to destroy her.

Review

The beginning of this book really hooked me in. I was prepared for some awesome action, some gut-wrenching scenes, and wild twists. But after page fifty or so it was like a slow decline into the wastelands. I wish there were good aspects of Dualed because that premise is honestly kick-ass. But the only positive I can even scrounge up is that Chapman is a pretty good writer. She knows how to write the action scenes vividly, but characterization and plot were killer (in a bad way). 

So let's dive in to why Dualed was just not for me. My biggest problem was with West. She might just be my least favorite main character. The choices she was making were beyond ridiculous. The whole concept is that you have to kill your Alt or your Alt kills you. Simple enough. But then after she loses a loved one (keeping it vague for the spoiler free version) she decides that she needs to prepare to kill her Alt. What better way to train than to become an assassin! Also known as: strikers. 

Okay...so it kind of makes sense that she would want to train for your own Alt murder by killing a bunch of Alts. But then...she gets activated to kill her own Alt. So why does she keep being a striker? Because it helps cope with the loss of that loved one? It still doesn't make sense. And then at the end of the day she avoids her own Alt. West can't gain up the courage to kill her but she has no problem killing other people. 

It was beyond infuriating. And Chord--the one character who could have redeemed the book--is constantly sidelined by West. She wants nothing to do with him even though he's trying to help her. I think the tagline for this book should be "Goodbye, Chord" because it was said in a variety of ways, countless times. 

The ending is fairly predictable. The world-building is equally baffling as West's choices. And a part of me feels like this book is in the same vein as The Hunger Games where it's kids-killing-kids. Only problem is that this book totally missed the mark. It could have been great but the execution drove it into the ground. 

An amazing concept gone terribly wrong because of a protagonist who makes terrible decisions