I recently bought a new kindle after my old one broke. For some reason I was unable to download this title from the cloud onto my kindle, therefore I will be unable to review this title. I am sorry for any inconvenience caused

Imagine just having moved house and you are anticipating your first day at a new school, your first day at high school no less. Feeling stressed yet? Now put yourself in Ethan’s shoes, you wake up and see a petite blonde girl in the mirror, that blonde girl isn’t a stranger, she’s you, you’ve been ‘Chosen’, even down to your name and backstory. And what’s worse your parents make you go to school anyway because this is just what happens to Changers.

When I first read about the concept of this, like others have said, it reminded me of Every Day by David Levithan. In that book the protagonist wakes up in the body of a new person every day. They have no choice over it though, just have to cause the least disruption to the person they displace.

Changers however, grow to the age of 14 in one body, then for the next 4 years they switch once a year to be a different person (different genders, races, etc. but all the same memories and the same family). Finally, at the end of this time they have to pick who they become permanently, but you can’t go back to where you started. What a perfect teen theme, identity, choosing who you have to become at still quite an early age, loss of innocence, loss of childhood.

There’s the Changers Council with their bible and branding, your Touchstone ‘fairy godparent’ to see you through the weirdness and the need to Chronicle the process. There’s a great quote in the book that says “It’s an essential human tendency to forget who we were on the way to becoming who we’re going to be.” Not everyone that knows about Changers is 100% positive about the process and I think that will continue to be explored.

I really enjoyed the read (4/5 stars) and it saw me through/contributed to a sleepless night. I definitely empathised with poor Ethan. There were aspects of the concept that I think need a little more clarification, however because this is the first in the series I am assuming some of that will come later (and lead to a re-read to make full sense of it all – but personally that’s what I enjoy about book series).

With gender identity and sexuality being growing issues in YA literature I am sure Changers will have a lot to contribute on the topic.