Origin by Jessica Khoury

Title: Origin
Author: Jessica Khoury
Type: Young Adult Novel
Genre: Fantasy
Series: No
Copyright: 2012
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Rating: 3 out of 5

Summary: from Good Reads
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.

Feelings: 
I think this novel brings up some really important questions about mortality and the cost of immortality. Is it worth being immortal if there is going to be no one with which you can share eternity? Is living forever always worth the cost of getting there? Is it worth loving if they grow old and you do not? These are all questions which Khoury addresses in her first novel. Without having spoilers it is hard to address this in more detail.

Pia is immortal and she has been told over and over again how she is perfect and that she will lead the team in creating a race of immortals the only problem is she doesn't know the cost of doing so. On her seventeenth birthday she ventures out of the compound she was born and raised in and never left. In the jungle she finds beauty and a human village which are very different from her. Eio a half native half westerner who was born in the village finds her in the jungle.

"I--it's my birthday. . . . I wanted to see the jungle. I've never been outside of Little Cam before. I wanted to feel what it was like to be outside in the wild."

"Are you a prisoner, Pia bird?"

"No," I say, startled.

"Why have you never left, then?"

"I--they say it's dangerous. Anacondas."

"Anacondas! I have killed an anaconda." (p.81)

This is from the scene where Pia and Eio first met. They collide while running through the jungle at night and Pia is left feeling startled and surprised. Eio is the first boy her age that she has met.

I really enjoyed reading this much more than I thought I was going to. I picked in up because I liked the cover and then when I realized it was first person I wasn't as interested. There were times where I think first person might have put us a little to close to Pia's emotions and moods because at times I wanted some distance from the moody teenager.

I would recommend this book mostly to girls and those interested in immortality.