Elysia is created in a laboratory, born as a sixteen-year-old girl, an empty vessel with no life experience to draw from. She is a Beta, an experimental model of a teenage clone. She was replicated from another teenage girl, who had to die in order for Elysia to exist. Elysia’s purpose is to serve the inhabitants of Demesne, an island paradise for the wealthiest people on earth.
Everything about Demesne is bioengineered for perfection. Even the air induces a strange, euphoric high, which only the island’s workers–soulless clones like Elysia–are immune to.
At first, Elysia’s life is idyllic and pampered. But she soon sees that Demesne’s human residents, who should want for nothing, yearn. But for what, exactly? She also comes to realize that beneath the island’s flawless exterior, there is an undercurrent of discontent among Demesne’s worker clones.
She knows she is soulless and cannot feel and should not care–so why are overpowering sensations clouding Elysia’s mind? If anyone discovers that Elysia isn’t the unfeeling clone she must pretend to be, she will suffer a fate too terrible to imagine. When her one chance at happiness is ripped away with breathtaking cruelty, emotions she’s always had but never understood are unleashed. As rage, terror, and desire threaten to overwhelm her, Elysia must find the will to survive.
Sometimes when I’m bored (at work, driving, working out) I let my imagination run wild with what I think the world will look like in the future. Will there be cars or hovercrafts or just teleportation tubes? I can honestly say that the world that Rachel Cohn created is unique because I for sure never envisioned her world.
BETA is set on an island that is genetically engineered to be perfect. The air is even infused with a calming gas so that everyone is happy and healthy. Clones exist on this island to serve because mear humans would not suffice. The island is only for the rich (clearly), I mean who would want to live amongst the poor? The main character is a clone of a teenager called a BETA. She is one of the first of her kind and is purchased by a well to do family to be a companion for their children.
The book follows Elysia as she slowly discovers her humanity that she shouldn’t have. She soon starts to retain some memories from the teenager she was cloned from. Elysia also discovers that she has her own thoughts and wants and needs that she should not have. This of course has to happen or there would be no book to read.
I really enjoyed the book. It was written well, the story developed at a good pace. Everything that happened was well thought out and the language was inventive, but not too far-fetched that you couldn’t figure out what was going on. I really like the world that Rachel Cohn created and the story that goes with it. It has some adult themes so I would recommend this for older “young adults.”
4 bards
Moving! 
I really enjoyed this book and thought it had a lot of challenging ideas in it.
I've read some of the mainstream books this author wrote with David Levithan, and they were a delight. Interesting that both of them should have produced a spec fic book while writing alone(his is Every Day). The premise of this one sounds a little strange – surely a clone is just a twin of whoever they're cloned from? And what would be the point of killing somebody to produce one? In fact, why would you need to? A few cells would do it. Perhaps this is explained in the novel?