Lisa Reviews: Geoffrey Girard's - "Project Cain"

 “Jeff discovers he’s a serial killer clone—and he’s got to track down others like him before it’s too late. A thrilling YA companion to S&S Touchstone’s Cain’s Blood, releasing simultaneously.

This dark, literary thriller is a story about blood: specifically, the DNA of the world’s most notorious serial killers, captured and cloned by the Department of Defense to develop a new “breed” of bio-weapons. The program is now in Stage Three—with dozens of young male clones from age ten to eighteen kept and monitored at a private facility without any realization of who they really are. Some are treated like everyday kids. Others live prescribed lives to replicate the upbringing of their DNA donors. All wonder why they can’t remember their lives before age ten.

When security is breached and the most dangerous boys are set free by the now-insane scientist who created them, only one young man can help find the clones before their true genetic nature grows even more horrific than the original models: a fifteen-year-old boy, an every-boy…who has just learned that he is the clone of Jeffrey Dahmer.”

Project Cain is filled to the brim with information, background knowledge and a ton of other things. I didn’t want this review to be too extremely long, so instead of summarizing the book myself like I usually do, I just inserted the synopsis from the Barnes and Noble website!

The element that stuck out the most to me was the amazing cast of characters! Each one, from Jeff to his father, to Castillo, had substance and history. I found every single person that the reader was introduced to, to be very interesting!

Jeff is only one of probably thousands of clones created by the government. Each clone is created from the cells of the world’s most infamous serial killers. So not only did we learn about each of these teenage boys, but we also learned real information on serial killers – interesting!

Jeff has being living, what seems to be, a normal life. He is a teenage boy, who lives with his scientist dad, who enjoys learning, and talking about what he knows. That is until he finds out whom he really is. Before his life did a three-sixty, Jeff never once had evil thoughts like he does now, never once had he dreamed of dead people. Besides the extraordinary characters within Project Cain, the struggle Jeff has with himself is what pulled me in and forced me to read this book. He knew what he was, and who he was, but he was in constant battle with himself.

When reading Project Cain, it’s obvious that this isn’t any average Young Adult Thriller. I think that’s because the characters are based upon real life serial killers, and there is so much REAL information within the book’s pages, that makes it stick out from the rest.

Overall I really enjoyed Project Cain and learned a lot. I can see where some people who claim “information dumping” to occur are coming from, but I didn’t know much about serial killers, and liked learning about it. I had just watched a documentary on Netflix the night before I received this book in the mail, and was totally in the mood already.

There were two small things that did slow the story down a bit for me, and those were the constant driving and sitting in hotel rooms that Jeff and Castillo did during their search. I understand that there’s a process, but I felt that the reader didn’t need to go through the entire thing. The second thing is that Jeff feels that he is useless when helping Castillo with the search! Yet he knows his dad, and he is the one who can most likely understand the clues that he left behind.

Project Cain was suspenseful, mysterious and dark! I felt like I was in Jeff’s head the entire time, and I really enjoyed that!