Review: Revived by Cat Patrick

Publication date: May 8th 2012.
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
My rating: 3 of 5 stars


As soon as I finished reading Revived, I rushed to GoodReads to check my friends’ ratings, and they were exactly what I expected them to be: eight out of ten gave this book three stars, just like I did. In my experience, there are two types of three-star ratings: the I-liked-this-but-didn’t-love-it three stars and the I-have-no-idea-how-to-rate-this three stars. Revived undoubtedly belongs to the former. It wasn’t bad by any standard, but it certainly wasn’t captivating either. I suppose describing a book as merely enjoyable isn’t much of a compliment when I so badly hoped to need the words like exciting, mind-blowing and spectacular.

Dying is very unpleasant. Fifteen-year-old Daisy McDaniel should know, she’s done it five times so far. Each time, she was brought back with an experimental drug called Revive. She was five when she died the first time, together with 20 other children, most of whom were also brought back from the dead. Now they’re all part of a secret experimental program and they’re living under different names all over America.
After getting stung by a bee and dying for the fifth time, Daisy must move to Omaha with two agents who are posing as her parents. She’s had a lot of practice moving around, but there’s one thing she’s never done: she’s never made friends; so it’s no small surprise when she strikes an immediate friendship with the school’s golden girl, Audrey. Audrey has an older brother, Matt, and he and Daisy soon realize that they like each other a lot. With Audrey on one side and Matt on the other, Daisy is happier than she’s ever been, but the Revive program is going through some changes and God, the mysterious scientist behind it, is not acting like himself at all.

The more I read, the more I realized how much wasted potential there is in Revived. In the right hands, this story could have torn me apart and then allowed me to put myself back together. In Cat Patrick’s hands, however, it ended up being mediocre: neither the writing nor the plot have any obvious flaws, but I just couldn’t help thinking how much more it could have been. I felt kind of sad when I should have been sobbing, I smiled inwardly when I should have been grinning like a lunatic, and the scenes that should have made me swoon left me lukewarm at best.

The relationship between Daisy and Matt was sudden, but it didn’t bother me as instalove usually does until she decided to reveal all her secrets to him after four days of being together. As soon as I relaxed and started enjoying the fact that neither of them was proclaiming eternal love, Daisy chose to endanger herself, the agents she was living with and dozens of other people in the program for some boy she’d only just met. No matter how many right decisions she’d made after that, I couldn’t forgive her for her recklessness and stupidity.

I think Cat Patrick could write better books, four and five-star books, if only she’d dare to further explore the emotional reactions of her characters. I have high hopes for her next project.