Plot:
Meet Morgan Dey, one of the top teen Reducers at The Body Institute.
Thanks to cutting-edge technology, Morgan can temporarily take over another girl’s body, get her in shape, and then return to her own body-leaving her client slimmer, more toned, and feeling great. Only there are a few catches…
For one, Morgan won’t remember what happens in her “Loaner” body. Once she’s done, she won’t recall walks with her new friend Matt, conversations with the super-cute Reducer she’s been text-flirting with, or the uneasy feeling she has that the director of The Body Institute is hiding something. Still, it’s all worth it in the name of science. Until the glitches start…
Suddenly, residual memories from her Loaner are cropping up in Morgan’s mind. She’s feeling less like herself and more like someone else. And when protests from an anti-Body Institute organization threaten her safety, she’ll have to decide if being a Reducer is worth the cost of her body and soul…
Review:
From the second I got the email about the opportunity to review this book, I knew I had to read it. The description just hooked me and this book didn’t disappoint me in the slightest.
For Morgan, working out is something that she enjoys doing. In society, people are rewarded for being in “good shape”, and they are penalized and fined for being overweight. This is supposed to encourage people to stay in shape so as to relieve stress on the health care system.
From this emerges the Body Institute, where people who are struggling with their weight can go to have someone else’s consciousness implanted into their body to lose the weight, and then after the weight loss is complete, the original person’s consciousness is then restored into the body. Seems like the perfect way to lose weight for all of the lazy people who can afford to do so.
For most people, the idea of the Body Institute is something that just is—it’s not too outlandish to imagine that it is necessary. Some people are concerned by the technology that the system uses, especially those of older generations who aren’t too tech-savvy. But there are a group of protestors who will do anything to see the Body Institute taken down.
Throughout the progression of this book, we see Morgan go from being completely trusting of the technology used to perform the transfers, to a little skeptical, and then questioning everything about the program. Turns out that the program isn’t exactly what she thought it was, and she makes it her personal mission to let everyone know what’s really going on.
The way this society is so obsessed with weight and image is only a slight exaggeration of what our current society looks like. Is it really so hard to imagine that people are so obsessed with weight loss and looking thin that the government would step in and do something to aid the obsession? Not really.
