(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)

Before the accident, Lia Kahn was a lot of things: happy, loved…human.  Alive.  Now, six months after the crash that killed her, six months after being reborn, Lia has finally accepted her new reality.  She is a machine, a mech, and she belongs with her own kind.  It’s a wild, carefree life, without rules and without fear.  Because there’s nothing to fear when you have nothing left to lose.

But when a voice from her past cries out for revenge, everything changes.  Lia is forced to choose between her old life and her new one.  Between humans and mechs.  Between sacrificing the girl she used to be and saving the boy she used to love.

Even if it means he’ll hate her forever.

Robin Wasserman is an amazing writer, yet I did not like Crashed as much as I liked Skinned.  I’m not entirely sure why, though.  The characters develop more, the plot is a bit more interesting and we learn a lot more about Lia’s world.  Yet it somehow fell flat for me, which is probably my own fault for having unrealistic expectations after reading Skinned.

Lia has changed a lot since the first book, no doubt about that.  She and the other mechs live on the fringes of society, far away from the privileged life she once took for granted.  Lia is still selfish, but readers will empathize with her throughout the novel because her selfishness is tempered by an acceptance of what she has become.  Yes, she finally realizes she is not and never will be human again and Robin Wasserman does an excellent job of bringing us close to an inhuman character.

What I like about Crashed is that we learn a lot more about characters’ lives before they were mechs as well as how mechs were invented.  Jude has a very interesting backstory, which is why I’m glad we see more of him in this book.  As for Auden, let’s say that he takes a very interesting turn that was not entirely unexpected.

I give this book 3.5/5 stars.

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