Deadly Design

Gr 8 Up—Connor and Kyle McAdams's parents never knew their sons' DNA had been manipulated in vitro by a self-serving geneticist, until it was too late. When the athletic, intelligent, and popular Connor dies of heart failure on his 18th birthday, it is an inexplicable tragedy. Sixteen-year-old Kyle, who had always lived in his brother's shadow, launches a social media search for other teens conceived at the fertility clinic and unravels a horrifying experiment gone wrong, spelling doom for the other teens and for himself. It is a race against time for Kyle to find the missing Dr. Mueller, certain there will be something in the research that can halt the premature heart failures. This thriller is fast paced, as Kyle enlists his friends, including an ex-Marine computer hacker, to track down Dr. Mueller, or his alias. As Kyle mourns his brother and begins to fall in love with gal pal Cami, he blindly trusts seemingly helpful doctors and agrees to be frozen for a short time, to stave off death while the cure is being developed. Readers will become fond of the teen, who evolves from angsty to empathetic, but are in for a roller-coaster of twists and turns. Employing believable science, such as fertility genetics, with skeptical aspects of cryogenics and eugenics, the realistic tale dips its toe into science fiction and medical thriller genres.