TWO by Leigh Ann Kopans: A Five Reasons Review
“I let my eyes close and think of what a world would look like with just the two of us. With no worries about Supers or Hubs or blood work.
Sounds like heaven to me, but it would be boring as hell for Merrin.”
—Elias VanDyne, TWO
Ready for the further adventures of the world’s sweetest superpowered couple? This sequel to ONE, Leigh Ann Kopans’ debut YA sci-fi romance, picks up exactly where the first book left off—and catapults our heroes straight into a strange new life with a host of fresh challenges.
Merrin and Elias (Melias? Errin? They need a portmanteau) are on the run. Joining their half-superpowers together, they’ve flown far away from the Biotech Hub, where Elias was the subject of sinister experiments that nearly killed him. Now Biotech’s hunting them down while they search for a safe place to hide. They end up seeking sanctuary at the Clandestine Services Hub, where they uncover even more of Biotech’s dirty secrets—including a secret formula that could destroy the Supers’ world forever. Merrin wants to go back to Biotech to save the day. Elias longs for a safe, normal life, and he’s terrified of returning to the place where he almost died. Will he face his fears? Can he and Merrin work through their differences, even though she wants to fly and he wants to be Mr. Normal? And is this sequel the ending these characters deserve?
Yeah. It totally is. Here are my Five Reasons:
1. Elias speaks. I was a tiny bit nervous about this, I’ll admit. I really liked both Merrin and Elias in ONE, but I had Merrin pegged as the more charismatic of the two, so I was initially a little worried about how a whole novel from Elias’s POV would play. Turns out it was a total pleasure.
Because you’re in Merrin’s head for all of ONE, you might sort of take it for granted that her quest—transforming her One power (floating) into a Super so she can fly on her own—is worthwhile. Like, you get her, you understand why flying is so important to her, and you feel how essential her goals are to her happiness. That’s why it was so interesting to see things from Elias’s perspective in TWO and have my assumptions challenged. He wants a simpler life than Merrin does—he dreams of “a quiet, peaceful job where who I am depends on what I contribute and not my genes”—and after being in his head for a few chapters, I found myself agreeing with him. It added another dimension to Merrin—admirable determination can seem an awful lot like pigheadedness and recklessness if you look at it from another angle. It didn’t damage Merrin for me, though; if anything, I liked her more because I could see her flaws more clearly. (And through Elias’s eyes, I also saw more vividly what made Merrin beautiful to him, and his deep love and respect for her definitely makes him an A+ book boyfriend.)
2. Strange world, relatable conflict. Because Merrin and Elias are on the run and out of Nebraska, there’s a lot of new stuff to digest in TWO—new characters, new settings, new twists and threats. As in ONE, there’s some great worldbuilding and neato technology, but never at the expense of the central relationship, which is the story’s heart. The sci-fi aspects of the plot may drop us in another place and time, but the ongoing conflict between Merrin and Elias stays totally relatable. When Elias cautions Merrin against injecting herself with experimental formulas or venturing back to Biotech, he could be any boyfriend trying to respect an adventurous girlfriend’s autonomy while worrying about her safety. And when Merrin asks Elias “Don’t you ever want to be more?,” she’s every girl who’s ever been exasperated with a boyfriend who’s no longer on the same page with her. I know some people like the sci-fi stuff to take precedence over the relationshippy stuff, but I feel like those elements are well balanced in both ONE and TWO. It’s essentially a story about a young couple trying to figure out how be their best selves, both together and apart. The sci-fi elements are a cool enhancement, but Merrin and Elias are what kept me turning pages, and Kopans is smart to keep their evolving relationship front and center.
3. It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a platonic male-female friendship! What’s really cool about TWO is that MULTIPLE opportunities for a forced love triangle emerged, and the book upended expectations every time. There’s nothing wrong with a love triangle—I don’t believe in dismissing entire plot devices—but they sometimes feel predictable or shoehorned into a busy plot that can’t support romantic angst on top of everything else. I kept waiting for Elias to feel an illicit spark with another girl: Leni, his childhood best friend; the gorgeous human lie detector they meet at the Clandestine Services Hub; Hayley, their new friend who can whip up hurricanes and hailstorms. And I definitely thought Merrin might be headed for a hookup with Gallagher, the smooth, confident college guy who works at Clandestine Services. I was so glad it didn’t happen. Not saying it wouldn’t have been plausible, but there was enough natural conflict between Merrin and Elias—and enough danger around them—without raising the specter of cheating. And I always appreciate a story that presents strong male-female friendships with no secret horndogging mucking things up.
4. They can ALSO make crème brulee. Sometimes superpowers can feel like a device and not an integral part of the characters’ world. Kopans thinks not only about the big implications of her characters’ powers, but also about the mundane ways the powers might manifest in day-to-day life. Some of my favorite parts in TWO were those small moments when characters used their powers in practical, everyday ways. Leni and Daniel combine their powers to scorch regular pudding into crème brulee. Merrin uses her floating power in different ways, depending on her mood: sometimes she’s floating up to Elias’s level to kiss him, and other times she does it when she’s trying to win the upper hand in an argument. It’s clever details like those that make the characters live and breathe.
5. The perfect series ending. For the last third of the book, I felt like the story was headed toward an ending I didn’t expect. I won’t give anything away, but I was surprised, a little disturbed, and concerned about the implications. It’s a testament to these characters that I was willing to accept that ending as a reader—I was already imagining how the unexpected development would affect Merrin and Elias in the long term. But in the end, Kopans steered her story back to the conclusion it’s been building toward since the first page of ONE. It’s perfectly calibrated and immensely satisfying, and you’ll close the book with a big smile on your face.
I’m not giving anything away. 🙂 Go pick it up—it’s the price of a latte, and it lasts much longer!