Seventeen-year-old Retta
Heikkinen is in love with a boy. He is completely gorgeous, captivating, and
mysteriously named Hemingway. The situation is rather ideal that he likes her,
and she likes him. There's just one little problem. He's a blue heart, an android.
Being in a relationship is its own complicated mess, but how long can a forbidden love last? Soon Retta discovers a secret that could destroy the uneasy truce between the blue hearts and humans, which makes life under the domes on Mars possible. Would expose what she knows to make things better or worse? And how can she know for certain without exposing the secret?
Retta and Hemingway are forbidden by the government to be together as a couple because he is an android and she is a human. Living on Mars can be difficult especially for the androids who are treated as second class citizens and even property of Synlife. Retta meets Hemingway at the coffee shop she works at and she was so in awe of how good looking he was and fell in love with his eyes that have galaxies in them. Retta's mom died when many years ago leaving Retta and her younger sister Marta to be raised by her father. Retta's father a botanist is not happy when she brings Hemingway home and finds out he is an android he wants to be his mother and is very vocal about his views on the subject but since his daughter is going to 18 he cannot say much. Their relationship does not get off the ground at first since Hemingway breaks up with her saying that it is too dangerous for them to be together bad things will happen to them.
Retta of course is devastated and does everything she can think of to try to get over him and learn more about androids and why humans treat them so badly. With the help of her friend Mei they break into and find out some important info about the androids and that their hearts are not really blue but red like humans that it was a lie told to make them seem just like machines. Soon a person calling himself The Voice is calling for a revolution for androids and humans to rise up and get equal rights for androids all over Mars and stop being treated like property and just machines. With this news, many people come out as being androids since there is not an easy way of telling who is one unless you can spot their tell.
So it turns out Retta's teacher Dr. Craspo and one of the high officials in the government comes out as being an android. Retta finds out that the government wants to send a lot of the androids away to start colonizing another planet for humans to go live on but they are not going to ask for volunteers they will force them to leave their homes and families. The end of the year dance soon arrives and Retta has no one to go with and does not ever really want to be there but she hopes to see Hemingway she just can't stop thinking about him, but when he shows up with a date another android she crumbles and runs away. She ends up in the industrial district called the vents and gets attacked and almost raped by an android when Hemingway comes up and saves her.
He takes her home and his mom helps her. Retta and Hemingway are left alone and start kissing but soon break it up and she asks about the girl and she says she is like him and safe and will not get hurt if they are together. Retta does not like his answer and runs home. The school year is ending and Mei tells Retta she should let Hemingway know what the found out from Synlife so she calls him and asks him to meet her at the coffee bar. When she tells him the news he is upset that she broke into the building saying they were dangerous people they decide that for him not to be taken away they need to run away together and deliver her information to the Voice.
They travel to New Tokyo where they will stay awhile, but since it mostly Japanese Colony they stick out in the crowd. They were told by the voice to meet someone named Masumi Kim, but the Information Recovery Services(IRS) bet them there and erased his memory and are soon after them and they run away from the agents. When they are in their hotel room he tells her about a ceremony the blue hearts perform when they want to get married because by law they are not allowed to do it legally. She agrees to marry him and the both say some kind of vows from their heart. They visit a wind garden but those IRS agents find them and they are on the run again. They get to the train station and head to New Sydney.
Since Retta has been posting pro-android equal rights type stuff on her website the IRS were after them. They really want Hemingway but since she broke into their facility they wanted to arrest her too. She gets a message from her dad about her sister Marta being sick and he asks if they should go back to see Retta's family. After they spent the day in the city Hemingway bought tickets to take them back to New Helsinki so Retta could go see what was wrong with her sister he also bought tickets to New Hyderabad. When they got back Hemingway went to meet his mother and Retta went to the hospital and she found out her sister was dying something was wrong with her heart the doctors were basically not doing anything but letting her die since they do not have many donors available to give heart transplants.
Her father was not happy to find out Retta married Hemingway he did not see the androids the same way as her he thought they were freaks and just machines. Then they got together with both their parents and talked about the situation they told Sonja Hemingway's mom all they learned about the androids being sent away. She did tell them that Synlife technically owned the androids. Retta had come up with a brilliant idea of how to help her sister and ask Sonja for her help. Retta asks if an android heart could be put into a human since it uses human blood and she said yes but Retta would have to break into Synlife again and steal one. So Retta and Mei once again went to Synlife but Sonja helped them so they did not have to break in saying they were there to visit a relative.
The plan worked for the most part but Retta almost got caught but Mei was the distraction and lured the guards away from Retta so she could escape. She got to the hospital and Sonja had found a doctor willing to do the surgery, but it was going to be tough to convince Marta and her father. He would not want his daughter to be a cyborg and be part android but he soon agreed because he did not want her to die she was scared about the surgery but she wanted to live. She went back to the apartment and found Hemingway and told him all that had happened and he said he had finished the Holo-documentary he was working on. Soon there was a knock at the door the IRS had found them again and took him away. She had to find out where they were holding the androids so she went to talk to Mei's father who is a member of the Parliament and on the committee that cooperates with the Unified Martian Government.
They got me out of Synlife and they ask her father where the took all the androids he did not want to tell them but Retta explained she was in love with one, married him, and needed to find him. He tried to tell them the androids were owned by the government and could do what they wanted with them, but Retta insisted they were not so different than humans. So he reluctantly told them where to go Space Gate 11 they also asked him to broadcast the documentary. At the gate, tons of people were there waiting to get on flights to go on vacations or just leave the planet we're talking about what they just saw and Retta got up on a container and began talking about the blue hearts and telling the people that they were being held in the space gate and they needed to stand up to the government and have them release the androids the abducted. It took a lot of begging and pleading to reason with the people but they decided to not let this injustice continue.
They all stormed the warehouse shouting "Free the androids. The children of Mars." They took the agent's weapons and threatened them and they did not fight back and the opened the doors and released the androids. When she found Hemingway she hugged him and they kissed.
The epilogue of course Marta lived and she was faster and stronger than before since she was part android and a hybrid. Hemingway and Retta had their own apartment and there was a new vendor set up shop with a sign that said"Android-grown Coffee beans." Retta's Dad say the sign and was not impressed he still did not too pleased about androids showing who they were and being part of society. I hope there is a sequel to this book I'd love to see continue on with Retta's and Hemingway Journey and see how Marta adapts to her new heart.
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