Elysia is created in a laboratory, born as a sixteen-year-old girl, an empty vessel with no life experience to draw from. She is a Beta, an experimental model of a teenage clone. She was replicated from another teenage girl, who had to die in order for Elysia to exist.

Elysia's purpose is to serve the inhabitants of Demesne, an island paradise for the wealthiest people on earth. Everything about Demesne is bioengineered for perfection. Even the air induces a strange, euphoric high, which only the island's workers-soulless clones like Elysia-are immune to.

At first, Elysia's life is idyllic and pampered. But she soon sees that Demesne's human residents, who should want for nothing, yearn. But for what, exactly? She also comes to realize that beneath the island's flawless exterior, there is an under­current of discontent among Demesne's worker clones. She knows she is soulless and cannot feel and should not care-so why are overpowering sensations cloud­ing Elysia's mind?

If anyone discovers that Elysia isn't the unfeeling clone she must pretend to be, she will suffer a fate too terrible to imagine. When her one chance at happi­ness is ripped away with breathtaking cruelty, emotions she's always had but never understood are unleashed. As rage, terror, and desire threaten to overwhelm her, Elysia must find the will to survive.

I liked the summary of Beta from the get-go. It was new, but not too unusual, and it had a nice science-fiction kick to it which excited me, since I had been looking for a good sci-fi book for so long. Unfortunately, I didn’t find what I was looking for in this novel. Maybe it was there in bits and pieces, but it wasn’t big enough to make me fall in love with the story.

Beta is about a teen beta, Elysia, a girl cloned from her ‘First,’ another girl with aesthetic appeal and talents who died in the past. Clones are created to serve the residents on Demesne, an island paradise where the rich go to relax–literally. Chemicals are put in the air and ocean so that the inhabitants will always feel at ease and ataraxic. Unfortunately, all humans are affected by these chemicals so human workers will simply not work, due to the relaxation they feel that prevents them from doing so. This is where the clones come in. They do the jobs that humans can’t on Demesne–they act as construction workers, assistants, maids, and even companions to the families they are serving. At first Elysia is content in doing her job, even happy, really, if clones could feel. She even hides the kinks in her system that aren’t supposed to be present in clones because the family she is serving is already, of sorts, ‘her family’ as well. But when things happen that reveal just how wrong her beliefs are, Elysia stands up for herself and proves that she isn’t just another robot willing to do her master’s bidding anymore.

To be honest, all the characters in this book felt extremely detached from me. Maybe it was because Rachel Cohn tried really hard to make sure the clones didn’t have feelings at first, but I just couldn’t feel Elysia, especially in the latter part of the book, when the romance amps up. The residents of Demesne are all airheads, in fact. And though I knew this was the author’s purpose, I find it hard to believe that every single rich person on that island is content in living a petty life taking drugs, (‘raxia) or doing whatever is they do in ‘paradise.’ Instead of trying to build on the characteristics of certain people, maybe the author could assert more and state the facts in the world in the book so that the reader will spend less time questioning the loopholes, and more time feeling the story. The one saving grace happened near the end, when Alexander showed up, but even then, I couldn’t credit the author because his character couldn’t be developed since there were only a few pages left.

To be honest, the romance irked me as well, and I felt that the book would be fine without it. I could accept the fact that Elysia could feel, but I found it hard to swallow near the end when she easily abandoned the supposed ‘love’ she had for another person, no matter how indebted she was to him. Throughout the book I felt like the story and I were two different cliffs, with no bridge to connect us. I didn’t feel invested and involved enough in the book to like it a lot.

However, I liked the idea Rachel Cohn presented. I liked the interesting premise she had in mind for Beta though she lacked world-building and structure so some events, instead of flowing smoothly, sometimes seemed flat and even unrealistic, at times. Perhaps an improvement in the author’s writing and the way she portrays the characters will result to better sequels because I felt like the book needed more heart and soul so that the story would tell itself and hook the reader in from beginning to end. But I am looking forward to reading more from Rachel Cohn because even though the backbone of the series crumbled; with changes in writing, the sequels may be able to ignite the little spark I saw in Beta to a full-out flame.