Spark by Rachael Craw

Title: Spark

Author: Rachael Craw

Publisher: Walker Books Australia

Date of Publication: July 1st 2014

Source: Purchased from Robinsons Bookshop

Read: December 2014

I bought this book a few months ago, along with Cooper Bartholomew is Dead (which I've just read) and The Adventures of Cinnamon Girl (which is still on my TBR pile). It took me a little while to get to it, but it was definitely worth the wait.

First of all, how gorgeous is that cover? The physical copy is even lovelier.



Here's the blurb from Goodreads:

Evie doesn’t have a choice.

One day she’s an ordinary seventeen year old, grieving for her mother. The next, she’s a Shield, the result of a decades-old experiment gone wrong, bound by DNA to defend her best friend from an unknown killer.

The threat could come at home, at school, anywhere. All Evie knows is that it will be a fight to the death.

And then there’s Jamie. irresistible. off-limits.

After her mother's death, Evie moved in with her aunt, who lives in the house where she spent her summer vacations as a child. When strange things start happening, like sudden growth spurts and unexpected strength, she can't understand what's happening to her. When she has a sudden and uncontrollable urge to protect Kitty from an unkown threat, it's revealed that she is actually a Shield, and Kitty is a Spark. An experiment generations before has led to a group of genetically modified superhumans, who become either Shields (protectors) or Strays (attackers) when they encounter the right person (Spark). 

Evie now has the job of protecting Kitty from an unknown assailant, which would be difficult enough, but she's untrained, has no idea who she's looking out for, and has to go to a new high school where everyone's a potential suspect. As an added complication, she's had a crush on Kitty's twin brother, Jamie, forever and hasn't yet forgiven him for a humiliating incident a few years earlier. Now she has to spend much more time with him than she'd like, and he's setting off sparks of his own. Can Evie stop the killer before he gets to Kitty?

Spark is clever and thrilling and at one particular point left me gasping in shock. That doesn't happen very often, and I love it when it does.

Spark raises questions of genetic predetermination, free will, designer genes and all the ethical issues that go along with that.

I thoroughly enjoyed it and can't wait to get my hands on Stray. Seriously, go read this book now!