Could you imagine a place where you couldn’t trust anyone, friend or not with any secrets, escape plans, or couldn’t even tell if they were a real person? Well, that is the fear that the book Variant by Robinson Wells plays off of. The story follows a sixteen-year-old orphan named Benson who has gone through the foster system many times and is starting to get sick of it. When he is greeted with an opportunity to go to a new type of school, one that says it is guaranteed to be a breath of fresh air, Benson takes the opportunity and decides to go there. When he gets to the new school, he can tell that something is different, but maybe not in such a good way. When the car he’s riding in goes through the school gates, three kids chase after it and one of the kids tells him not to trust Isiah or Becky, who he is supposed to meet with for student orientation. When Benson gets into the school, he finds out that Becky is actually only seventeen years old. He also discovered that the school is structured very differently from normal school. For instance, the classes are run by kids, the school is separated into groups, Variant, Society, and Havoc, each student has jobs that they must fulfill such as cleaning duty, security, janitors, etc. However, he also discovers that students cannot leave the school and if students break the school rules, they go to detention which no student has ever come back from. Over the following months and days, he can only think about one thing, escaping. Overall this book is really captivating and surprisingly has some very intense moments that left me on the edge of my seat. It also had some shocking turns that it was subtly building up, but I still didn’t expect or see it coming. The ending twist is also pulled off extremely well and left me both shocked and saddened. If you are interested in such books, as The Hunger Games, and the Maze Runner series, this will definitely be the book for you. Even if you aren’t the biggest fan of those books, I believe this will still be an enjoyable reading experience.
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