I would be just as happy, if not happier, if Malik and Amber weren't in this story at all.
Perhaps I should explain that a bit. This book has four POV characters: Malik Bruder, Amber Laska, Eli Freiden, and Tori Pritel. Malik and Amber are the tough ones, and Eli and Tori are the smart ones; the second pair, together, fill the role of the Jessica for me. Unfortunately all the characters get about an equal amount of screen time, so I have to sit through Malik's and Amber's chapters to get to those of Tori and Eli.
(Explanatory note: The "Jessica" is the one POV character I actually like in a book of multiple POVs. I'll often read said books mostly to get to their parts, and just read other characters' POVs to get to the Jessica's chapters. It's named after the character Jessica from the Mr. Terupt series by Rob Buyea, who ended up being almost the sole reason I was still reading that series.)
I like Eli, and I like Tori. They're both interesting to read about, and I can relate to them. But I don't like Amber or Malik nearly as much, perhaps because they're angrier, more violent, and less... uh... rational? They seem to me like less compelling characters, but your mileage may vary.
If anybody has superpowers, then they haven't manifested yet, aside from one incident on Page 13 where Eli briefly gains the power to literally fly. This is never mentioned or utilized again.
These kids are definitely not beating the |evil clones of criminal masterminds| allegations. So far they've run up normal theft, grand theft, grand theft auto, breaking, entering, breaking and entering, driving without a license, assault and battery, threats of violence, freight train hopping, innumerable traffic violations caused by learning to drive from videogames (yes, really), juvenile delinquency, trespassing, escaping police custody, |breaking a notorious criminal out of prison|, abduction (I think), and jaywalking. Not in that particular order.
The climax involves the kids |breaking a notorious criminal (who's also one of their clone sources) out of prison, which turns out to be an evil plot by the people behind the cloning; they manipulated the kids into breaking him out because he's actually one of them|. The trouble with that is |the kids' decision to break him out of prison hinges on a lot of mostly uncontrollable factors that all have to line up perfectly: the kids have to decide to go back to the town of Serenity, they have to decide to search the abandoned factory, they have to actually find the one piece of evidence planted for them, they have to manage to deobfuscate it, they have to decide to go visit this specific guy in prison, and they have to pull off the breakout itself. And not many of those can be planned for, especially because the villains have no actual contact or influence (even covertly) with the kids for almost the entire book|.
|But if you're going to have a "You thought you were foiling my plans, but you've actually just fallen into my trap!" moment, it has to feel earned. You can do that in one of two ways: either the actions the heroes take are the only ones they realistically would, or the villain has to have a hand in basically every place the heroes might turn away from the desired course -- basically, they have to be manipulating every decision the heroes make along the way to the villain's desired outcome. [Now I shall say| potato soup |to confuse people who didn't highlight the spoiler tags.] Unfortunately, neither of those is true here; there are many times when the kids might just as easily have done something else, and looking back, I can't see any villainous influence in any of them. So... that could have been done better.|
(I was critiquing the ending in the above two giant redacted paragraphs.)
Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for some violence.
3 stars.
(Endnote: There's also a companion short story, "Masterminds: Criminal Density", about stealing neutron stars.)
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