Mila 2.0 by Debra Driza

by:  Debra Driza 
published by:  Katherine Tegen Books
publish date:  March 12, 2013

Mila was never meant to learn the truth about her identity. She was a girl living with her mother in a small Minnesota town. She was supposed to forget her past—that she was built in a secret computer science lab and programmed to do things real people would never do.

The story begins with Mila believing she is a 16 year old girl that has just moved to a small town after the death of her father.  She doesn't know that she a secret military robot that one of the scientists whom she believes is her mother just stole from the government.  After a car accident, Mila comes to learn the truth about herself and it sends her and her mother on the run.

While, I didn't think this book was wholly terrible.  I didn't think it was great.  I was disappointed in Katherine Tegen Books because typically their books are exceptional.  I felt like they had dropped the ball on this one.  I felt like this book was very difficult to believe in many respects.  This biggest issue I had was Mila's incapacity to hurt others.  Even when her "mother" was in danger she still didn't want to hurt her enemies.  I felt like that was so unbelievable.  Especially considering she had been trained to be a super warrior, it seemed like that would come tearing through at some point and she would just start killing everyone.

I read the whole thing.  I liked the concept.  I just found some parts of it to be hard to believe.  The reader is supposed to accept that Mila is becoming more and more human, yet as a human I would think that we would do anything in our power to protect the ones that we love.  Mila was capable of so much more to protect her loved ones and she wasn't tapping into her resources like we as readers were lead to believe she could.  That's just my thinking on the subject.