What if your entire life's purpose was to be used as a replacement for someone else? What if the world didn't see you as a person, but as an object? What if you knew that your feelings and desires were real, but just about everyone else discounted them? This is what life is like for Eva, created to be an "echo" for someone else's family. For she is not really Eva to the outside world, but instead a copy of Amarra. 
 "You're an angel among mortals. You are hope." 
 Every day, Eva wakes up. Eva learns about Amarra's life on the other side of the world, and how to be like Amarra, in case anything happens to her "twin" and she needs to step in to live that other life. Only, she wishes for a life of her own, one where she could do things that every other girl gets to experience, and maybe even have someone to call her own. Her feelings are to be locked inside and not shared with anyone, not even the one person who she wishes she could share them with. 
 "You're not 'the echo' to me." 
 It wasn't hard to get wrapped up in Eva's thoughts, and wish right along with her for things to be different. I wanted to shake many people and try to reason with them that surely Eva must be human, just like Amarra was. 
 It's always fun to get to discuss a book with others, and this book happened to be the monthly pick for one of my groups. Opinions ranged from love to anger, and much of that had to do with details which were either left out or assumed. There's something about Science Fiction which is looked at just a little bit more closely when it comes to dotting all of i's and crossing all of the t's. People want explanations for the hows and whys. The creation of the echos was a vague concept, one not really explained in depth outside of the weavers, guardians and loom. It just was. For the most part, I was okay with some of the details being omitted, but there were definitely a few details which weren't explained as much as I would have preferred (how Eva ended up with Amarra's memories when she was made before the memories happened - this still isn't making any sense to me). My opinion was this : I'd give 4 stars for an interesting story idea and good entertainment value, but 2 stars for there being a lot of loose ends and some ideas that floundered near the end. So my final answer lies somewhere right in the middle. 
 This book explored the concepts of what it meant to be human and what lengths people would go to in order to hold on to the ones they love. It can be a study in one's own ideals when a book can get you to think about how you would handle being in the same situation, which this book certainly achieved for me. For that, I am glad that I read this. 
 What is this power the dead have over the ones they leave behind? It's strange and beautiful and frightening, this deathless love that human beings continue to feel for the ones they've lost. 
 Maybe that's what the dead do. They stay. They linger. Benign and sweet and painful. They don't need us. They echo all by themselves.