Baby X

 By: Kira Peikoff   

Location: FIC PEI

Genre: Thriller

“Your genes, your bloodline, it’s all pretty much irrelevant unless you inherit a serious illness. But aside from that, it’s not the big stuff. It doesn’t control what you do or think or care about, or how you treat others, or how fully you love. All that’s up to you.”

When any biological matter can be used to create life, stolen celebrity DNA sells to the highest bidder—or the craziest stalker—in this propulsive thriller.

With a vivid imagining of the future, _Gattaca _meets Black Mirror in Kira Peikoff’s Baby X.

In the near-future United States, where advanced technology can create eggs or sperm from any person’s cells, celebrities face the alarming potential of meeting biological children they never conceived. Famous singer Trace Thorne is tired of being targeted by the Vault, a black market site devoted to stealing DNA. Sick of paying ransom money for his own cell matter, he hires bio-security guard Ember Ryan to ensure his biological safety.

Ember will do anything she can to protect her clients. She knows all the Vault’s tricks—discarded tissues, used straws, lipstick tubes—and has prevented countless DNA thefts. Working for Thorne, her focus becomes split when she begins to fall for him, but she knows she hasn’t let anything slip—love or not, his DNA is safe. But then she and Thorne are confronted by a pregnant woman, Quinn, who claims that Thorne is the father of her baby, and all bets are off.

Brilliantly plotted and terrifyingly prescient, Baby X is an unpredictable and relentless speculative thriller perfect for fans of Blake Crouch and John Marrs.

Review by Anissa

This was a neat read. There are three POVs and it's unclear how they are related until you get well into this. And once that happens, that makes this even more interesting. I liked how the author pulled this off and not very like anything I've read lately. I admit to not being into the romance aspect until everything else came together at the end and then, looking back, I thought it was kinda lovely. So, well done on that front also. The medical tech is what made me want to read this but there was much more to this speculative fiction and I appreciated that.