Variant

Title: Variant

Author: Robison Wells

Rating: 3 stars

Summary: Benson Fisher thought that a scholarship to Maxfield Academy would be the ticket out of his dead-end life.
He was wrong.
Now he's trapped in a school that's surrounded by a razor-wire fence. A school where video cameras monitor his every move. Where there are no adults. Where the kids have split into groups in order to survive.
Where breaking the rules equals death.
But when Benson stumbles upon the school's real secret, he realizes that playing by the rules could spell a fate worse than death, and that escape--his only real hope for survival--may be impossible.

Review: I finished this book and felt... nothing, except for a maybe a slight annoyance at the cliffhanger ending. But a good annoyance, which I can't really define but it totally exists. Probably. This book reminded me a bit of Maze Runner, in the sense that it's a prison where there are no adults, the kids have no idea what they're there for (but it turns out to be testing), and some super-secret organization is watching them. In the book there are several twists that yield intriguing results, but they seem to have been put in at random. Benson was the same as all other main characters in this type of novel, though he had no choice. I always wondered why the people in whatever "prison" the book takes place in never rebelled before the main character arrives, but I have discovered that it's because it takes a person who just won't stop pushing, won't give up. In Variant, that person is, of course, Benson. Will I be reading the second book? Thanks to that ending, I have no choice.