Book Review: “The Ones We’re Meant To find ” by Joan He

“The Ones We’re Meant To find ” by Joan He (2021)

Genre: YA, Science Fiction, Fiction

Page Length: 384 pages (electronic review edition)

Synopsis:

Cee has been trapped on an abandoned island for three years without any recollection of how she arrived, or memories from her life prior. All she knows is that somewhere out there, beyond the horizon, she has a sister named Kay, and it’s up to Cee to cross the ocean and find her.

In a world apart, 16-year-old STEM prodigy Kasey Mizuhara lives in an eco-city built for people who protected the planet―and now need protecting from it. With natural disasters on the rise due to climate change, eco-cities provide clean air, water, and shelter. Their residents, in exchange, must spend at least a third of their time in stasis pods, conducting business virtually whenever possible to reduce their environmental footprint. While Kasey, an introvert and loner, doesn’t mind the lifestyle, her sister Celia hated it. Popular and lovable, Celia much preferred the outside world. But no one could have predicted that Celia would take a boat out to sea, never to return.

Now it’s been three months since Celia’s disappearance, and Kasey has given up hope. Logic says that her sister must be dead. But nevertheless, she decides to retrace Celia’s last steps. Where they’ll lead her, she does not know. Her sister was full of secrets. But Kasey has a secret of her own. (description from Goodreads)

Review:

I don’t think I really knew what to expect when reading The Ones We’re Meant To Find even though I was familiar with the novel’s synopsis. On one hand, I knew it would be a story about a shipwreck and a tale of two sisters but I had no idea what awaited me in the story and how it would all pan out in the end.

The novel falls to sisters Cecilia and Kasey who are very close to one another and they share a very special bond but are complete opposites. As the reader weaves through each sister’s narrative through flashbacks and their own descriptions of themselves it seems that Cecilia is the more social of the two while Kasey would rather be left alone to research new science.

It is definitely an interesting narrative surrounding two sisters that are trying to find their way back to each other but also grapple with the torrent of emotions and the past that haunts them inside. Cece (Cecilia) is trying to regain her memories and figure out why exactly she’s on this island and Kasey is desperately grasping being for any hints as to whether her sister is alive or dead. The futuristic aspect of the world that they live in with holograms and the different kinds of futuristic technology is a unique setting for the story. There is also the bigger mystery of trying to figure out what happened to the sisters to end up where they are now.

My only complaint about the book is that it was slow-moving for me personally and it made it really hard for me to keep reading the story and want to figure out what was happening. The second half of the book picks up which helped and the switching pov between Cecilia and Kasey’s viewpoints becomes a lot clearer. My favorite aspect of the story was the concept of a high-tech eco world that is crafted due to the state of climate change and the themes of making choices which can best be summed up in this quote from the book:

“None of us live without consequence. Our personal preferences are not truly personal. One person’s needs will deny another’s. Our privileges can harm ourselves and others.”

I thought the social commentary on society, hierarchies, and our ecosystem to be really interesting in relatable to a lot of the conversations that we’re having in today’s world. I enjoyed the use of technology and especially how it goes into discussing AIs and bots. I don’t want to say too much more about this novel because it’ll be a lot of spoiler material, but the direction it went completely caught me off guard. I love a good plot twist!

This was a case where this particular book wasn’t for me since it was too slow-moving for my tastes personally. It was beautifully written and detailed to create a defined picture of the bubble of the world our main characters reside in.

Final Verdict: