Book Review: Altered

Title: Altered.
Author: Jennifer Rush.
Pages: 323.
Series: Yes, #1.
Source: Library.
Publisher: Little Brown.
Published Date: 1/1/13.
Summary:

"When you can’t trust yourself, who can you believe? Everything about Anna’s life is a secret. Her father works for the Branch at the helm of its latest project: monitoring and administering treatments to the four genetically altered boys in the lab below their farmhouse. There’s Nick, Cas, Trev . . . and Sam, who’s stolen Anna’s heart. When the Branch decides it’s time to take the boys, Sam stages an escape, killing the agents sent to retrieve them. Anna is torn between following Sam or staying behind in the safety of her everyday life. But her father pushes her to flee, making Sam promise to keep her away from the Branch, at all costs. There’s just one problem. Sam and the boys don’t remember anything before living in the lab—not even their true identities. Now on the run, Anna soon discovers that she and Sam are connected in more ways than either of them expected. And if they’re both going to survive, they must piece together the clues of their past before the Branch catches up to them and steals it all away."

Links:
Goodreads.
Barnes and Noble.

Cover:

Mhmmm! Who doesn't like a shirtless HOTTIE on the cover of a REALLY good book!? ...Well unless you plan on reading it during school, or at work during your break...that could be a little weird..(awkward)

My Thoughts:

Anna has always lived a quiet life. She was home schooled and spent a lot of her free time helping her father with his work. But he isn't a lawyer, nor is he an accountant...instead he is a scientist and his most recent projects are the four boys living in Anna's basement.

Cass, Trev, Nick and Sam have lived there for years. And for all those years has Anna's dad has run tests and monitored their progress...until that is, the agency her dad is testing the four boys for, comes to retrieve them.

Pushing her to runaway with the boys, Anna is unsure if she should follow her dad's orders...her father is laying on the floor injured and bloody, just asking her to leave and not to contact him, because it isn't safe. Anna is torn, and runs out of the basemen to leave with Sam, Nick, Cas, and Trev.

On their run, Anna and the four boys try figure out their past and how they became a part of this agency and the experiment. But the farther they travel and the more they figure out about the boys, the less Anna knows about herself. She comes to the realization that she isn't who she always thought she was. She isn't her father's daughter, her mother might not be dead, and in someway or another she's connected to these four boys...even before she found them her basement.

With only one female character and four males, I was hoping Anna wasn't one of those to start a love triangle (...or would that be a pentagon?), and to jump from one boy to the next. I didn't want to read another book about a girl who doesn't know what she wants, and creates feelings for various characters. But thank goodness that didn't happen in Altered!! Thank you Jennifer!! Anna only had feelings for Sam, which the reader discovers right from the start, she's best friends with Trev, enjoys baking cookies for Cas, and isn't on good terms with Nick.

Altered already had me pulled in with the fact that four boys were kept in a basement, tested and monitored twenty four hours a day. It had me interested when the agency came to Anna's house to take them away, but instead the four boys and Anna ran. It had me completely hooked, when the five of them tried to figure out each of the boys' pasts. And the ending completely turned my brain into mush, when Anna realizes that she isn't who she always thought she was, her mom might not be dead, and somehow she is connected to these four boys, in ways she doesn't know yet!!

*I feel like I'm yelling...but I loved this book SOOO MUCH!!!*

Man, oh man! I am so happy to have discovered Altered, and I almost passed out when I realized that it was the first part of a series! I couldn't get enough of Altered, the story and the characters, both were very interesting. I can't wait to see how the story continues, and how things work out for all five of the characters!