Blog Tour: The Body Electric by Beth Revis

Hi all today as part of The Body Electric blog tour hosted by Xpresso Book Tours, I get to share my review of this fascinating book, before that here's what the book is about.

Publisher: Scripturient Books 
Publication date: October 6th 2014
My rating: 3 stars

The future world is at peace. Ella Shepherd has dedicated her life to using her unique gift—the ability to enter people’s dreams and memories using technology developed by her mother—to help others relive their happy memories. But not all is at it seems. Ella starts seeing impossible things—images of her dead father, warnings of who she cannot trust. Her government recruits her to spy on a rebel group, using her ability to experience—and influence—the memories of traitors. But the leader of the rebels claims they used to be in love—even though Ella’s never met him before in her life. Which can only mean one thing… Someone’s altered her memory. Ella’s gift is enough to overthrow a corrupt government or crush a growing rebel group. She is the key to stopping a war she didn’t even know was happening. But if someone else has been inside Ella’s head, she cannot trust her own memories, thoughts, or feelings.

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The Body Electric was a really different read to what I was expecting it to be, it actually made me want to stop and think that all this could actually happen in real life. It was at times quite scary thinking about. Imagine being able to relive one of your favourite memories. It would be brilliant to be taken to this special memory you’ve had especially when you’ve had a crap day, but imagine being able to do this with a person that was special to you, but no longer around anymore. This is what Ella’s mum offers at her Reverie Mental Spa, not only is this a great way of connecting with loved ones, but Ella’s mum hasn’t got long to live herself, she’s suffering from Hebb’s disease and so being able to relive those memories that she shared with her husband is important to her. However not everyone see’s the Reverie Mental Spa this way, there’s a lot of people out there who want to use this to their own advantage, and use it to control other people.

This whole idea of entering in other people’s dreams reminded me a lot of the film Inception, a film which I’ve seen countless times and totally love. Because reliving memories is one thing, but being able to enter someone else’s dreamscape and experiencing it too is scary, especially when you’re able to gleam information from it for your own advantage, or even influence what happens in that dream. Ella soon discovers this is something she is able to do, so she doesn’t want to share this with everyone, she knows what they will do with that information, but she discovers it’s a way she can help her mum when she’s too weak to relive her memories. But soon enough other people discover what can be done and approach Ella to do the same, they say it’s for the greater good, but when Ella finds herself in too deep is there anyone Ella can really trust? 

I enjoyed this concept that Revis presented us with in The Body Electric, delving into people’s memories wasn’t as clear cut as everyone assumed it would be, being in some one’s mind and trying to make sense of everything whilst at the same time trying to remember that this wasn’t real life could be a real struggle. But I really liked Ella as a character, so if I was in her shoes I would probably do the same thing, especially if you’re told that you’ll be helping a lot of people out by doing it. I wish though that Ella thought things through before accepting, I know Ella had people who she couldn’t trust guiding her, and so it would seem like what she was doing was the right thing, but I’d wished she’d listened to somebody else more and earlier on. I really liked Jack, I understood that what he was saying was a lot of take in, but when you’ve actually stepped into his memories and realised he’s actually telling you the truth, don’t you think that you should try and trust him? I may be slightly more based towards Jack because I think he was able to win me over really early. He was a sweet guy, and you could tell that his feelings for Ella were genuine; I just wished that Ella was able to believe this sooner. 

The Body Electric had so many things going on, that it could be a lot to wrap your head around, but I enjoyed the fast pace, the rebellious androids thrown in the mix, the thrill of the chase and the constant questioning of who we could really trust going on in the story. Also throw in a swoony character who had me firmly in his corner, I really ended up enjoying The Body Electric. Revis has created an exceptional story in The Body Electric that I look forward to binge reading more of her work soon.

AUTHOR BIO: Beth Revis is the NY Times bestselling author of the Across the Universe series. The complete trilogy is now available in more than 20 languages. A native of North Carolina, Beth’s most recent book is The Body Electric, which tells the story of what was happening on Earth while the characters of Across the Universe were in space.

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