SHADOW COPY

A teenage girl with an unusual secret hunts her stalker in this YA SF thriller.

Becca Tanner seems like a typical high school student, but no one at her new school knows about her cancer or the revolutionary measures her father took to save her. Six months prior to starting West Johnston High School, the teenager underwent a procedure performed by her father, a doctor who specializes in extraordinary full-body transplants called psychocedent transfers. During the operation, which was a success, something happened that caught the attention of patient Darla Monroe. The family relocates to North Carolina, where her father continues his work at a secret facility. Becca intends to tell no one—not her new friends or old—about the transplant, but a baddie knows all about it and begins menacing and stalking her. While Becca searches for the villain, Darla searches for Becca. Darla has critical information and needs to find Becca before it’s too late. The entire cast works well in this first installment of Michele and Ryan Leathers’ Shadow Copy series. The authors create a convincing ordinary teenager trying to manage the transplant’s odd fallout: Her mother tells her, “Before, people said, ‘You look just like your mother,’ or ‘You two could be sisters.’ Nobody says that anymore.” The Leathers deftly consider the ethics of the operation and ably toggle between Becca’s and Darla’s perspectives as their stories connect. There may be more to Becca’s second chance than she realizes, and it’s up to her and Darla to uncover the truth.

A thrilling SF mystery that explores mortality and the nature of identity.