"Matteo Alacran was not born. He was harvested. His DNA came from El Patron, lord of a country called Opium -- a strip of poppy fields lying between the United States and what was once called Mexico. Matt's first cell split and divided inside a petri-dish. then he was placed in the womb of the cow, where he continued the miraculous journey from embryo to fetus to baby. He is a boy now, but most consider him a monster -- except El Patron loves Matt as he loves himself, because Matt is himself.
As Matt struggles to understand his existence, he is threatened by a sinister cast of characters, including El Patron's power-hungry family, and he is surrounded by a dangerous army of bodyguards. Escape is the only chance Matt has to survive. But escape from the Alacran Estate is no guarantee of freedom, because Matt is marked by his difference in ways he doesn't even suspect."
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That was the blurb on the book "The House of the Scorpion". It had enticed me to read this book because of how it had sounded. "Matteo Alacran was not born. He was harvested". That line caught me completely me by surprise because out of all the blurbs that I have read, no sentence had ever been that unique! That just made me want to borrow the book IMMEDIATELY!
"Matt's first cell split and divided inside a petri-dish. then he was placed in the womb of the cow, where he continued the miraculous journey from embryo to fetus to baby". Another sentence that had interested me . I imagined it was a science-fiction novel but there was actually a bit of realism in the story. Strangely enough, the sentence "placed in the womb of the cow" also made me want to read the novel.
My initial response to the novel was excitement, longing (to read the book) and curiosity (because of the blurb). After I had finished "The House of the Scorpion", I was overall satisfied with the book but the ending didn't really meet my expectation but I still loved the book (8/10 :D).
The novel had caught my eye because of the deep red cover that had a bright red scorpion that seemed to be on a grainy wall. My first impression to the back cover was that it looked very sinister and dark (type of novels I like) so it actually appealed to me very much. It was also dimensioned like a normal book and how the black font of the blurb mixed with the red background really made it it unique for me.
How I would've written the blurb:
Matteo Alacran. The clone of the powerful druglord El Patron. Neglected by El Patron's family and almost everyone else, he tries to understand how he came to be while being faced with violence, prejudice, love and adolescence. El Patron loves Matt, but does he? What does Matt really know about the ones around him? Should they be trusted? What Matt discovers about his existence will ultimately change his perspectives about his life.
Together with the one's closest to him, Matt will try to survive in his sinister world and his life will be never ever be the same again.
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