Renegade, J. A Souders

Renegade
J. A. Souders
ISBN: 9780765332455
Read January 2014?
YA dystopia, girl power (except not really)

I was really put off by this book.  It started with such a strong premise, and then it all just went pear-shaped.  I'm not going to go into details, but suffice it to say that the worldbuilding and narrative structure did not stand up, even under the insubstantial weight of the cliffhanger story that was set upon them.  Add in cliche relationships, a convenient set of powers, and memory loss that isn't dealt with realistically, and the whole read was just really frustrating to experience.

Listing here because someone had asked about it, and I had a hard time remembering the title.  Mileage may vary, and just because I didn't enjoy it, doesn't mean that you wouldn't.

(Edit: helps to actually include a brief synopsis, doesn't it?)

Heroine is a kept girl chosen at birth and raised essentially in a utopian seraglio because of her "perfect genes" and destined to inherit the leadership of her underwater commune from the current Mother.  Everyone has blonde hair and blue eyes, and Mother is really quite strict about genetic purity, and proper behavior.  People are manipulated through having their memories wiped when they do things wrong, or through simply being "vanished."  Our heroine, not able to be vanished, keeps getting her brains wiped as she's incapable of actually acting in accordance with Mother's wishes for longer than about half a day.  That's perfect genes for you, I suppose.  In addition, there is a brute squad of very young girls who have been trained and mentally conditioned into being ruthless emotionless (or alternatively rage-filled - consistency isn't really great here) assassins.

Our heroine has begun to make the foggy realization that all is not dandy in utopia, aided in her discovery by a boy - an outsider from Above who arrives via a really stupid reason.  After that, everything goes downhill pretty quickly, devolving into long chase scenes through secret districts of the city (remember this is a smallish underwater commune here), hidden lower city levels (again, where?), mutants, fraught history lessons (spoiler, Mother is a liar), and more gory shambling zombie mutants before the inevitable cliff-hanger ending that sets up for the next book.