Review - Boy 7 by Mirjam Mous

Genre: science fiction, young adult
Pages: 288
Rating: 4/5
Goodreads
This book was originally written in Dutch and has been translated into German, Polish and Korean.

Summary
A boy regains consciouness in a bare field. He does not remember how he got there, where he came from and even his own name.

To his relief he finds a backpack containing a mobile phone. He wants to dial the emergency number,  but then he sees that he received a voicemail message. To his astonishment he hears: 'Whatever happens, do not call the police in any case'. He knows one thing for sure: that is his own voice. He left the message himself!



Using the stuff in his backpack, he goes searching for his past. But as long as he does not remember anything, he does not dare to trust anyone. Not even Lara...

Gradually he learns the terrible truth.

My thoughts
This book has been on my shelf for a long time, but when I learned that it was recently made into the first Dutch young adult sci-fi movie I immediately wanted to read the book and go see the movie.
The tension in this book grew very gradually. The author made clever use of switching between past and present to make you very eager to read on. The scenes in the past also provided extra characters and settings which added to the overall depth of the story.
I can make only make two remarks on this book. The first one is one of my bookish pet peeves, it was the constant use of an English word ('notebook') in a Dutch book. There are several words in Dutch that could be used in its place so there was absolutely no reason to use an english word. While I love the English language I think Dutch people let it overtake their own language a bit too much.
The other remark is only minor, but I would have loved to know more about 'CooperationX'. It was not like there where lacking any details about it that where relevant for the story, but it was just very interesting and it might have made to story come to life just a little bit more.
The main character was likeable and for a change not just 'a stupid teenager', which annoys me in a lot of YA books. I liked how not everyone was what he seemed to be and I also really appreciated the lack of romance. I feel like romance is thrown in way to often to make up for lack of an actual story. This story didn't need any romance at all. It gripped me from start and I really had a hard time putting this book down; I needed to know what would happen next!