Fourteen-year-old Mikayla Grebe is days away from taking the Fulfilled Genetic Potential test and proving she\u2019s worth society\u2019s investment. The fear of losing Elite status and becoming a Defective or an Expendable always looms. She knows that \u201cyou can lose everything in a moment\u201d\u2014like her friend Carmen, who vanished with her family one day. But shortly before the test, Mikayla learns her GRC is lower than she thought, sending her on a high-stakes journey, accompanied by her friend Garith Marquez, out of the Elite zone to see what\u2019s been hidden from her all her life. The more Mikayla learns and the more people she meets, the more she questions her society\u2019s priorities and starts to dismantle her own assumptions, many instilled in her by her brilliant and ambitious mother. The story\u2019s countdown structure, starting six days before the FGP, enhances the tension and makes readers aware of the stakes as Mikayla\u2019s test approaches, a beloved teacher disappears, and steely Dr. Ava, who runs the weekly lab assessment, targets her. Debut author Monders\u2019 detailed worldbuilding includes just enough hints about the past to create a convincing dystopian world. Mikayla develops a strong moral core and inwardly declares \u201cI can make a difference, just by being me.\u201d Dark-haired Mikayla has \u201cmedium-light\u201d skin, and Garith has light brown skin.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fourteen-year-old Mikayla Grebe is days away from taking the Fulfilled Genetic Potential test and proving she\u2019s worth society\u2019s investment. The fear of losing Elite status and becoming a Defective or an Expendable always looms. She knows that \u201cyou can lose everything in a moment\u201d\u2014like her friend Carmen, who vanished with her family one day. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5957,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5956"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}