Welcome to the VITRO blog tour! Jessica Khoury, the talented author of Origin, is back with a death-defying tropical adventure. Follow along over the next two weeks as Jessica takes readers behind the scenes of her latest novel.
“SOPHIE CRUE UNVEILED”
Sophie Crue is the heroine of Vitro. She spent the first six years of her life on Guam with her parents, Moira and Foster Crue, both doctors working for Corpus. When Sophie was six, her parents divorced. Her mom stayed in the South Pacific, moving to Skin Island full time to work, while Sophie and her dad moved to Boston. Ten years later, Sophie’s returning to Guam for the first time in response to a mysterious email that leads her to believe her mom may be in trouble.
In a way, Sophie is the opposite of Pia, the protagonist in Origin. Where Pia was raised in isolation inside the Immortis Project hidden in the Amazon jungle, Sophie was excluded from all things to do with her mother’s research and comes to the project as a total outsider. One of the hardest parts of writing Sophie was dealing with the psychological effects left on her by her mother’s absence. Like many kids, Sophie both hates and loves her parent, and that difficult relationship with her mother is crucial to her inner growth throughout the story. Sophie’s tale is one of emancipation from a childhood of abandonment and confusion as the questions that have haunted her are answered—and many of them in ways she never imagined.
About the Author:
Jessica Khoury is 23 years old. She has red hair. She was homeschooled. She’s an avid soccer player and was a three-time All-American striker. She is of Syrian and Scottish descent. She went to college in the same tiny Georgia town in which she was born and raised. And she’s a prodigiously talented writer with a huge following.
Jessica Khoury lives in Toccoa, GA with her husband, Benjamin. You can visit her online at www.jessicakhoury.com.
When Sophie is summoned by her long-absent mother, a scientist who works in a classified lab, Sophie throws caution to the wind and heads to the South Pacific. She sweet-talks her way onto a tiny supply plane piloted by Jim Julien, who lives on Guam with his alcoholic father. Jim is captivated by Sophie and against his better judgement agrees to take Sophie to the secretive and tropical Skin Island where her mom has been working for so many years.
There Sophie and Jim are met not by her mother but instead by Nicholas, a handsome, brilliant boy who leads them to Lux–a girl who looks exactly like Sophie. Lux is Sophie’s genetic twin and was bred using in vitro fertilization. But why? And just what have the scientists created Lux to be capable of?
With lyrical writing and ever-increasing tension, Jessica Khoury draws out the explosive answers in her much-anticipated followup to Origin.
Jennifer’s Review of Vitro
Review (4.5 Stars): The concept of Vitro was very interesting and thought-provoking for me and I really enjoyed this action-packed novel. Sophie Crue has come to Skin Island in search of her mother after receiving a distress email stating that she needed Sophie. With the help of an old friend, Sophie arrives at Skin Island and finds that everything isn’t what she believed it would be. She learns that she has a “twin” known only as Lux and the medical research that she once believed would help the world has a more sinister agenda. Now, she has to try to get off the island before its too late or Sophie will never escape this nightmare.
Vitro is an amazing novel about testing the boundaries of scientific research that will leave you mesmerized. I was so impressed by Ms. Khoury’s writing (reminded me of Michael Crichton) and found myself immediately caught up in this action-packed adventure. I was impressed with Ms. Khoury’s previous book, Origin, but nothing prepared me for how Vitro would affect me. This story will stay with me awhile especially since you hear so often how certain advancements in the field of medicine border between helping the world and just seeing if they can play God. That is what we see in Vitro, the scientists of Skin Island see life as something that they can use for financial gain and forget that there is still a human being involved. This attitude leads to some disastrous consequences. I’m looking forward to reading more from Ms. Khoury and I hope she writes many more books to come.
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