The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff

Mackie is allergic to blood.  And iron.  And consecrated ground.  That's because Mackie isn't human.  He's a changeling child, switched at birth.  In the town of Gentry, every seven years a switch happens, and the changeling baby usually dies.  But Mackie didn't.  No one talks about it.  No one acknowledges what happens in the town of Gentry.  Mackie has gone his whole life trying to be invisible, but he can't any more.  Mackie has been feeling sicker and sicker.  He's told he's dying, and the baby sister of a girl at school has been switched.  Mackie doesn't want to get involved, but he's being pulled into the world he doesn't want to know exists.  The world he's really from.

This started off good and then lost me as it went on.  There were some pacing problems.  Things really started to drag as it got toward the middle.  I wanted everyone to just get on with it already.  Stop the mopping around, I'm getting bored.


I also had an issue with what I felt was a major character discrepancy.  Tate is the girl who Mackie has a crush on and whose sister has been taken for the sacrifice.  Tate knows that the baby that replaced her sister and died wasn't really her sister, and she's trying to figure out the truth.  Tate is pretty kick-ass.  She doesn't take any crap from anyone.  She wants to know what's really happening in Gentry.  She's fed up with Mackie's crap.  She's tough.  So that was my understanding of her character.  Then Mackie finds out that Tate's sister is still alive.  Now, if someone told me my baby sister who I figured was already dead was in fact alive, my first question would be, "Where is she?" quickly followed by how could I find her.  Tate never asks where her sister is. She leaves Mackie to take care of it.  It seemed so completely out of character for Tate.  She was hardly the kind of person (I had been lead to believe) who would sit around and hope that someone else took care of things for her.  So that was really weird.

The other thing I didn't really like was how it turned out it was incredibly easy to take down the big scaries that everyone has been too afraid to challenge.  Like, amazingly easy.  One of the reasons that no one crosses the Lady (the bad fairy or whatever they were) is because she has this guy, the Cutter, who relishes in torture and everyone is horribly afraid of.  It turns out all you need to do to make him back down is hit him a few times with a crowbar.  Which Tate does, and then he's out of the picture.  Seriously?  That was our scary villain?  But that was so...simple.

And then while the Lady is sucking out Mackie's blood when he's offered himself in exchange for Tate's sister, he stabs her once with his knife.  So.  There we are.  It was all a bit anticlimactic I guess is what I'm saying. 

I liked that it was different from the other supernatural and fantasy books I've read lately.  It had a really interesting concept.  But the pacing and inconsistencies and the ultimate feeling of "Oh, that's it?" lead to a general feeling of disappointment.