The Girl With The Green Eyes is the first book in the Take Them Back series by J.M. Briscoe. In 1995, Julia D’accourt drives her nine-year-old genetically engineered daughter, Bella, to Cumbria, to the lab at the Aspira Research Centre where she was made. Beautiful Bella, she complains, uses her unnaturalness to manipulate others. “Take her back!” she demands of Dr Frederick Blake. He does.

In October 2018, having realised that her cover is blown, the thirty-two-year-old woman posing as Professor Elodie Guerre collects her daughter from school and they drive, with much complaint from nearly-teenaged Ariana, to a safe cottage somewhere on the Cornwall coast.

She knows that a team from the Aspira Research Centre will be on their trail. And possibly another, even more dangerous person. The mother in her needs to balance the need for caution with scaring her daughter too much, but she is unaware that Ri has a second mobile phone, until it is too late.

The dual-timeline narrative is related by several characters, detailing what happens to young Bella in Cumbria, the shocking incident that precipitated her withdrawal from the ARC and, thirteen years on, her flight with Ri to Cornwall and what ensues..

Possibly a product of the slow drip-feed of the story via The Pigeonhole, but this reader isn’t tempted by the cliff-hanger ending to continue the series. Speculative science fiction that will appeal to some.
This unbiased review is from an e-copy provided by BAD PRESS iNK and The Pigeonhole.