Dollar Store Book Club

I think there's an effort to show how cheap and expendable they all are.  But when you have people simply up and vanishing it seems you wouldn't want to squander the ones you have left.  There is some suggestion later that a lot of the ones they thought were taken away to be killed were actually being reassigned to something more suitable (with the assumption that they were being killed used as a controlling technique of their trainers), but it came in so late in the story that it felt like a retcon. 

I can imagine Wordweaver trying out a hermit life but he just couldn't enjoy it because all the books he packed to read were terrible.

So this is supposed to be a YA novel in the vein of Hunger Games… but the protagonist never once rebels against the dystopian system and in fact does everything that's expected of her, including murdering an innocent girl?

How the hell does the author expect this to work?

She's managed to slip into her alternates life fairly well with nobody suspecting anything despite how suspicious she acts. She lives with her grandparents and her younger sister on an apple orchard farm somewhere in England. At this point she doesn't do much outside of normal chores since this is the "sleeper" part of the story. It's stated that she's been classified as "safe", meaning her handlers aren't watching her as closely as they had been at first (though the hidden cameras are still in her house so checking in on her would be easy at any point). Even so she still has to check in weekly at a flower shop that serves as a front for the aria's hub of operations. There she gets any orders she might receive and is resupplied on her pills. There are two pills that all the sleepers take daily since arriving on this Earth. It's stated that these pills have two functions. First to make them healthier since the people on their Earth are less healthy than on this one, and second to prevent them from dying due to exposure to this alternate world. Turns out the atmosphere is poisonous to them.  

Well, that second part is actually a lie they were told. The pills are another form of control and it helps if the sleepers think they need them to continue living. There's also a third, more sinister reason for the pills that we'll get to later.  

The orders that she receives at this point are mostly mundane tasks. Take food and supplies to a checkpoint, deliver a couple of weapons somewhere, that kind of stuff. At one point she runs into another sleeper there and the two get off on the wrong foot, trading some curt insults before going their separate ways. She comes up with the insult of "cardboard face". 

Very clever.

There's a thing in the book that almost seems like a running gag where the sleepers can always recognize each other as sleepers, even if they weren't sleepers that were at the cabins at the same time. Seems like they kinda suck if they can keep outing each other. If they can recognize each other as "off" it seems odd that nobody else on the planet ever picks up on it. The only reason for this is that the author wants them to interact on occasion so they need to know who is who, but there were better ways to have that happen outside of them simply knowing someone else is a sleeper just by looking at them. There could have been some kind of hand signal or some type of code phrase.  

At one point she runs into one of the sleepers that she had an alliance with back in the cabins. Her name is... um... Elsie? Close enough. Turns out Elsie actually sought her out, but won't reveal why at the moment. She gives Lirael a pocket watch with a note. The note has a meeting place and says that the watch can disable her tracker when activated and turn it on if she wants to go to the meeting place.

Oh, yeah. Seems at some point all the sleepers had a tracker surgically implanted in their wrists. I forgot this because up until this point so did the author. In fact, it's not explicitly stated to be in her wrist until maybe 20 chapters after this point.  

So Lira doesn't go to the meeting place, but neither does she discard the watch or report the odd behavior of Elsie.  

Anyway, eventually she gets her first honest to gosh mission. Seems there's some city official that needs to be made dead. She goes to a checkpoint and meets up with some other sleepers and they go over the plan. They have a syringe that will make it look like he had a heart attack. So they are supposed to ambush him on his daily jog and stab him with it, when the body is found everyone will suspect it's just natural causes. Unfortunately when they find him he isn't jogging alone like he normally does and they can't do it without everything looking really suspicious. Two joggers dying of a heart attack would raise eyebrows. Instead of seeking guidance from their handlers or simply going back the next day they decide to follow him home and jab him with the needle when he goes to bed.  

For some reason there is like four sleepers for this mission, even though Lirael is pretty confident she could have done the job herself. One of the other sleepers is around her age while the other two are much older and have been sleepers much longer. The older and (presumably) more experienced ones are presented as inept. It's implied that the older training was less combat focused so they aren't as good at fighting as the "kids" are. Breaking into the house turns out to be a disaster since they set off the alarm. It also turns out that the target isn't alone this time either, it appears his mistress is with him. One of the older sleepers ends up shooting the target with a pistol, completely ruining any possibility that it will be mistaken as natural causes. As the police are approaching to respond to the alarm they set up a hasty scene where it looks like the mistress shot him and then herself before escaping out the back. Afterward Lira and the other young sleeper comment on what a fucked up situation that was and both say they will lodge complaints with their handlers.

Nothing comes of all that. 

Since the mission went so long it made her very late for a simple courier job she had afterward where she was supposed to deliver some food that we later learn is for the cabins. A young girl out riding her bike after midnight attracts the attention of some ne'er do wells who attempt to rape her. They rip her clothes off and get on top of her before she remembers that she's a killing machine (but only when it serves the story) and starts to fight them off. Even so she's in a bad spot until another sleeper shows up, the one she was going to take the food to. The two of them make short work of the baddies.  

Turns out that the sleeper that helped her was another one of the ones she had an alliance with back in the cabins. His name is Grey. He's Elsie's brother. He's also the one that helped her murder her alternate. A real prince charming. 

He helps her into his truck and they take the food to the cabin. I have no idea why they needed her to bring him food on her bike if he had a truck anyway. Afterwards he asks her if she still has the pocket watch. She says yes and he asks her to turn it on. They ride into the country until they get to an abandoned farmhouse. At the farmhouse is Elsie and several other sleepers. They say that this is a place that they go to unwind and get away from it all. A place where they can be teenagers and not sleepers. Lira seems to think there is something they aren't telling her, but she does hang around for a while before Grey takes her home.  

She doesn't go back there right away, instead going back to her daily work. During her time living with her grandparents and sister she is slowly starting to grow attached to them, especially her younger sister. Her grandmother had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and she's surprised to find that it upsets her to know that. When the war comes all these people will have to die anyway.  

Eventually Elsie actually shows up at her home and introduces herself to her grandmother as a friend. Lira is mortified that she would come right to her home and her sister is a bit suspicious that Lira has a friend. Elsie says she's planning a weekend camping trip and wanted to know if she could come. Her grandparents think it's a fine idea for her to go out and do something for once so she can't turn it down.

The "camping trip" of course is just spending time at the abandoned farmhouse. This time they want to do some exciting things, bucket list kind of things. Mostly dangerous things to affirm that they actually are alive. They drive motorbikes around while standing on them. Lay on a train track while a train bears down on them only to roll away at the last second. Jump off a high bridge into the river. Y'know, kids stuff.  

Lira starts to bond with them and starts to suspect that their motives are just to have a little time to try and regain the childhood they were denied. She spends more time at the farmhouse until one day something happens.  

She was getting a bit drunk with Elsie when Grey comes in. He seems a bit upset and thinks it's time for Lira to go. She and Elsie go to Grey's truck but Lira is suddenly a bit suspicious despite being two sheet to the wind. She runs back to the cabin and opens the door only to find a hidden room. Inside the room are monitors. On the monitors is the camera feed from her house.  

Elsie explains that they tapped into the network and were only spying on her because they needed to know if they could trust her. She explains that everything that they do, the entire sleeper program, is wrong. This is not their world. It has to be stopped. She doesn't know how, but she has to try.

Lira is mortified. They're traitors! She argues with them before finally running off and stealing their truck to get away.  

Ah, so there's an attempted rape scene and a male character comes to the female lead's rescue?

Guess we know with whom she'll be later having totally willing and not at all creepily transactional sex with! And he's named Grey for extra hilarity. Wonder how many shades of him we're going to see.

Truly a hallmark of shitty YA literature.

Also, I get being a reluctant hero, but when your refusal of the call involves being staunchly loyal to your dystopian overlords… tge author still doesn't seem to grasp the implications of the context this all is happening within.

Does the protagonist ever stop and think about the girl she killed and replaced?