What happened in Lifelike by Jay Kristoff - Recaptains

The basics

Title: Lifelike

Author: Jay Kristoff

Series: Lifelike #1

- Lifelike (2018)
- Deviate (2019)
- Untitled (2020)

Add it: Goodreads

Goodreads Summary:

On a floating junkyard beneath a radiation sky, a deadly secret lies buried in the scrap.

Eve isn’t looking for secrets—she’s too busy looking over her shoulder. The robot gladiator she’s just spent six months building has been reduced to a smoking wreck, and the only thing keeping her Grandpa from the grave was the fistful of credits she just lost to the bookies. To top it off, she’s discovered she can destroy electronics with the power of her mind, and the puritanical Brotherhood are building a coffin her size. If she’s ever had a worse day, Eve can’t remember it.

But when Eve discovers the ruins of an android boy named Ezekiel in the scrap pile she calls home, her entire world comes crashing down. With her best friend Lemon Fresh and her robotic conscience, Cricket, in tow, she and Ezekiel will trek across deserts of irradiated glass, infiltrate towering megacities and scour the graveyard of humanity’s greatest folly to save the ones Eve loves, and learn the dark secrets of her past.

Even if those secrets were better off staying buried.

Here’s our recap of what happened in Lifelike. Read on for a full plot summary to refresh your memory!

in short

Eve causes a scene during a robot fight and everyone thinks she has special powers. She and her friends come across a lifelike called Ezekiel, who seems to know Eve and Silas. The group is attacked again and again. It’s revealed that Eve is really Ana, the daughter of the scientist who created lifelikes. The group goes to the labs that Ana’s father used to create lifelikes. The rebel lifelikes are there and there’s a fight. Silas dies, and Ana finds out that she’s not the real Ana, she’s actually a lifelike called Eve. She teams up with Gabriel out of anger.

what happened in Lifelike?

• Eve is battling bots in what is essentially RobotWars to make money for her grandfather’s medicine. She is taken out by a robot, but somehow manages to release energy to take out this robot before it kills her. Eve now thinks that she has special powers.
• The group, consisting of Eve, Lemon, Kaiser, and Cricket, return home to the Dregs, where they all live with Eve’s grandfather, Silas, who’s dying of cancer.
• Along the way, they spot something crash into the earth. Obviously they go to check it out so they can sell the scrap. It turns out to be a lifelike (a humanesque robot) called Ezekiel. They bring him back to base, and it turns out that he knows Silas.
• Ezekiel keeps calling Eve Ana, until Silas has a private word with him. Ezekiel apologises for making the mistake.
• The Brotherhood arrive at the door and try to take Eve, since they think she’s got special powers after seeing her on the streams. Then another lifelike called Faith arrives, and the group has to battle everyone.
• Luckily for them, the base is actually an airship. They start to make their escape, but Faith grabs Silas and the ship crashes into the ocean.
• A kraken swallows the airship, and the group is separated.
• Eve starts to suffer from flashbacks because her memdrive is broken. She sees her (real) family, and remembers that she really is called Ana. Ana Monrova is the daughter of the guy who invented lifelikes. The Monrova family and the lifelikes lived together in Babel Tower, until Raphael became depressed over having his life controlled by humans. He committed suicide, which was the catalyst for a whole bunch of things. Grace, another one of the lifelikes, was killed by a bomb, and her boyfriend Gabriel rebelled against Doctor Monrova and his family. The entire family apart from Ana were killed.
• It turns out that Silas isn’t Ana’s grandfather either, he was a researcher for her father’s company until the rebellion happened. He saved Ana from the rebelling lifelikes and lied to her about her upbringing.
• The kraken seems to really like Lemon, which is good, because it means they can escape. According to the kraken Lemon has some good energy.
• Ezekiel leads the group to another lifelike called Hope, who is now running an orphanage.
• A creepy bounty hunter called Preacher is now looking for Ana. He arrives at the orphanage and is very angry when his dog is injured. Hope fights Preacher off, but is killed protecting Ana and the group.
• The group heads towards Babel Tower, with Preacher slowly trailing them.
• Ana remembers Ezekiel shooting her in the eye and gets upset.
• Preacher arrives. Kaiser saves the group by finding a bomb and killing himself and Preacher. Is there a website like Does the Dog Die? but for books?
• The group enters Babel Tower.
• It turns out that Lemon is the one with the special powers, and not Ana. Ana gets upset again (this happens a lot, but I guess it makes sense?) and Lemon and Ezekiel chat. They honestly have more chemistry than Ana/Ezekiel.
• Faith beheads Cricket and takes its head to Silas.
• Gabriel finally makes an appearance. He tells Ana that she’s the only one who can access Doctor Monrova’s lab, which Gabriel is hoping to use to create more lifelikes. Gabriel takes some of Ana’s blood for the scanner, but it doesn’t recognise her DNA. Meaning Ana is not Ana Monrova.
• Lemon and Ezekiel go to the prison tower to save Silas and Cricket. They fight off the lifelikes, and Silas finally dies. Lemon is about to be shot, but Ana jumps in front of the bullets for her best friend.

How did Lifelike end?

Thankfully for the plot and, I guess, everyone involved, Ana isn’t dead. She wakes up and speaks with Myriad, the AI at Babel Tower. Myriad tells Ana that the real Ana was injured during the attack back in the day. Her father took her memories and put them into a lifelike. So this Eve/Ana is a lifelike, not the OG Ana. Eve/Ana gets upset again. Myriad does admit that OG Ana’s body is still being kept alive, but she won’t say where it is. Eve/Ana tells her friends to leave, and then goes to get Gabriel, who is currently healing from the battle. She tells him that they have work to do.

This is a full plot summary of what happened in Lifelike by Jay Kristoff. Check out our recap list for more recaps. If you can’t find what you need, you can request a recap from us!