My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I really wanted to like Julie Moffett’s No One Lives Twice–after all, a comedic action-adventure story starring a girl who’s a computer geek should have been tailor-made for me, right? Certainly the premise is promising enough: Lexi Carmichael is a computer expert working for the NSA, leading a predictably boring life, until the disappearance of her best friend.
Speaking as a woman employed in the computer industry, though, I fear I found Lexi’s ability with a keyboard distressingly lacking. Much is made of how this girl is supposed to be a hacker, yet she spends an awful lot of time getting the men in the cast to do actual computer work for her. And off the top of my head, the one bit I can remember where Lexi herself is at a keyboard on camera involves her specifically screwing something up. None of this did much to impress me with Lexi’s computer ability.
Likewise, Lexi shows distressingly little agency in finding out what’s going on herself, as opposed to relying upon the various men in the cast. There’s much mileage spent on the obligatory selection of sexy men and the question of which one of them Lexi’s most attracted to–which is all very well and good–but I would have respected this book more if it’d spent less time trying to convince me the boys were sexy and more time showing me that Lexi was, in fact, a hacker.
Mind you, the book’s not wretched by any means. Moffett’s got some genuinely lighthearted moments in here, and to be fair, the book does pick up a bit towards the end. I fear I’m not its target audience, though. Two stars.