YA sci-fi book about a girl who is brought back by her parents after a severe car accident via some underground scientific stuff with stem cells

There's a book I read in seventh grade about a girl who is brought back from a severe car accident.

Her parents are doing some underground scientific stuff with stem cells and they use it to bring her back. The ringer is that they're keeping it a secret from her and she starts to find out, thanks to the help of her neighbor, and there's like a garden and a lock box.

There's also a butterfly on the cover and it's blue. Any ideas?

Is this The Adoration of Jenna Fox (2008) by Mary E. Pearson...? It's the first book in the Jenna Fox Chronicles series.

According to a review, the 17-year-old protagonist, Jenna Fox, is in a deadly car accident and is brought back to life by her scientist father, who grows a new body for her via the illegal use of a Bio Gel that can regenerate cells, then uploads 'back-ups' of her memories into it. She's initially led to believe that she hadn't died and was just in a coma, but gradually learns the truth over the course of the story.

Jenna Fox is the primary character in the novel. As a young woman, Jenna has been adored by her parents since her birth and treated nearly as a doll. She is placed on a pedestal, and spends much of her life afraid to fall. When she and her friends are in a deadly car accident, her father, a brilliant scientist, saves her life through the illegal use of Bio Gel, a substance that can regenerate cells, tissues, nerves, etc from living tissue. He creates backups of her memories, and keeps her alive within a biological backup system until her body is complete. Once it is, he and his family move to California where they can remain undetected from authorities, and where Jenna can recover.

Jenna awakens in her new body without any memories. Over time, many of these return, but do not mesh with the story her family is telling her. When they finally admit what they have done, Jenna is faced with the question of whether or not she can see herself as human, and can accept what she is. She begins to take a stand against her parents, and finds herself slowly over the course of the novel. She realizes that to be free, she has to destroy the backup copies of herself and her friends, and in doing so, she is able to forgive herself for the accident that claimed her friends’ lives.

The review also mentions a neighbour named Clayton Bender, who befriends her after she wakes up from her 'coma,' but is secretly a friend of her father's and has been entrusted with hiding her and protecting her from the authorities.

Clayton Bender is the first person outside of her immediate family that Jenna meets following her awakening from her “coma”. Clayton is a neighbor, living in a house just a few blocks from Jenna’s. Clayton appears to be a kind and gentle man, although he is also a bit eccentric. He builds art from nature, and has many birds on his property. Jenna is thrilled to know someone outside her own home, and over time, she and Clayton develop a friendly relationship. Over time, however, Jenna realizes Clayton is really her father’s friend, Edward, who has agreed to help hide and protect Jenna from the authorities. Despite his secrecy, Clayton does understand Jenna, and plays the role of friend, as he encourages her and helps guide her.

The cover of the book features a teal-coloured butterfly and you can read a preview of it here.



It's a bit tenuous, because there's no butterfly on the cover, and I can't find evidence of a garden and a lockbox, but Double Identity by Margaret Peterson Haddix has the teenage girl who finds out she was cloned from a girl who died in a car accident by her parents.



Mom cries all the time. Dad acts strangely and nervous. Suddenly, 12-year-old Bethany Cole finds herself in the car with them, frantically driving across several states in the dead of night. With no explanation, they leave her at a house in Illinois with a woman Dad calls Aunt Myrlie. Myrlie is visibly shaken to see Dad, and she's even more stunned when she sees Bethany. "She looks just like . . ." she begins. Mom and Dad, upset and weeping, drive off into the night, leaving Bethany with a stranger and a hundred unanswered questions.

Later, Bethany hears Myrlie talking to Dad on the porch of Myrlie's house. Myrlie says he has to tell Bethany about Elizabeth. Bethany begins asking questions, and Dad, who vaguely indicates by phone that he's in danger, allows Myrlie to tell Bethany about the past. Bethany learns that Elizabeth was her parents' first daughter, a sister she never knew existed. Myrlie is her mom's sister, and the two families lived near one another when Elizabeth and Myrlie's daughter, Joss, was young. Elizabeth and Joss were cousins, best friends, and Olympic gymnastic hopefuls. But around the girls' 13th birthdays, the two families made a road trip in which an accident took the lives of Elizabeth and Myrlie's husband. Bethany's mom, who was driving, always blamed herself for the crash. After that, Bethany's parents left town. Myrlie hadn't seen or heard from them in years until the night they left Bethany with her. Bethany is also shocked to learn that her father, whom she always believed to be some kind of money manager, used to be a doctor.

Joss comes from St. Louis to stay with Myrlie and Bethany. They watch old videos, and Joss is struck by how much she looks like Elizabeth. They don't just resemble one another; it's as though they were twins. During her time with her aunt and cousin, she discovers many ways in which she is similar to her dead sister. She also becomes increasingly aware the life she's been living is a lie. Her father sends a package containing several birth certificates for Bethany, all with different last names and cities of birth. He also sends wads of $100 bills. Myrlie, Joss, and Bethany can only speculate what Bethany's dad might have done for that cash or what kind of trouble he's in. Mom calls during one of her delusional episodes, creating more questions. She calls Bethany "Elizabeth" and says Dad believes if they save enough of her cells, they can clone her. Now Bethany wonders if her mother's ravings could contain any truth.

Around the same time, a man in a car with out-of-town plates starts following Bethany. Another incoherent letter from Dad indicates someone who just got out of prison is chasing him and hunting him down, so he can't come back. Joss and Bethany read a news article about a man named Van Dyne who was imprisoned for stealing money. His company was involved in cloning. Bethany recognizes the name of one of the fictitious employees through whom he supposedly filtered funds as an alias Dad had used.

Bethany's parents secretly return to town, but Van Dyne discovers them. The truth is revealed, that Van Dyne had paid Bethany's father to clone him. Now that Van Dyne is out of prison, he is searching for the version of him Dad had supposedly made. In fact, Dad had never made a Van Dyne clone but had taken the money to clone Elizabeth instead. The epilogue reveals that Bethany's parents are able to stay with her. Dad returns all of Van Dyne's money. Van Dyne has long talks with Joss; she says he is such a lonely man, he thought no one but his own clone could ever love him. He changes his ways and becomes a philanthropist. Bethany continues to learn who she is, apart from Elizabeth, and discover she is valued as an individual by her family.

If so, it would be a dupe of Book where a girl is left with grandmother and discovers she's a clone