ALA Booklist
(Thu Feb 01 00:00:00 CST 2018)
Alyssa a Jane Doe, aka Subject 684 s been locked up for two years, six months, and fourteen days. After a voluntary admission to a psych ward, she was snatched up by the security team at Lengard, who were intent on making her into an asset for their use. Two years later, they've gotten nowhere, and they're ready to make Alyssa disappear. When new evaluator Landon Ward takes on her case, Alyssa's given a reprieve from the days of mental and physical torture designed to break her down into nothing but a shell. Ward actually treats her like a human, a feeling she's completely unused to. It's enough to make her let her guard down, until an accident reveals why Lengard wants her d that they will stop at nothing to use her for their own ends. Australian author Noni has crafted an excellent entry novel that's stylistically quite different from other books in the genre. Readers, intrigued by Alyssa and her mystery, will surely beg for more.
Kirkus Reviews
For more than two years, Jane Doe, aka subject Six-Eight-Four, has been subjected to daily interrogation and painful medical experiments in a secret government laboratory.Lengard, the underground facility where she's incarcerated, has stripped Jane of all comforts except the invigorating pleasures of combat training with dark-skinned Enzo, one of her captors. She remains silent for the authorities' protection as well as her own, knowing that her voice possesses dangerous powers. Perpetual harsh treatment has made it easy to keep her guard up until she is assigned a new therapist: Attractive Landon Ward, blond, green-eyed, and close in age to 18-year-old Jane, is assigned to break through her defenses using kindness and patience. He arranges for Jane to move into his sister's comfortable apartment in the facility and even takes her on an excursion aboveground with his young cousins. Pale-skinned, blue-eyed Jane is shocked to learn she's been held captive in the heart of downtown Sydney, Australia. In a dramatic incident on a bustling street, she saves the life of Ward's niece, but this changes their relationship in unexpected ways. Ward has manipulated her once; is he doing so again?Readers willing to overlook rubber science are rewarded with appealing characters and an intriguing, twisty plot that builds to a suspenseful, cliffhanger ending. (Science fiction. 13-18)