variant

10/4/11
Variant | Robison Wells
HarperCollins
Hardcover/356pp.

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.

So, this book? Is pretty freaking compelling. But before I start gushing, let me get one thing clear: this book is not dystopian. No matter what anyone tells you, it is unique and original and fresh and omg and thrilling, but it is not dystopian.

VARIANT was one of my vacation reads, and I must say, I couldn’t have picked a better one! I read the first hundred pages on the way down to FL, and I was so hooked that I didn’t even mind my aching back (sitting for that long is hard, y’know). And when I actually arrived and was able to finish the book on the beach: absolute bliss! Though I read this book months ago, I still remember how addictive the story is and the complete shock I felt after those closing chapters.

In VARIANT, Benson Fisher arrives at Maxfield Academy with one thing: hope that this will be the end to his cliché foster-kid life. But when he finds out that there are no adults in the Academy—only students, who teach themselves and, somehow, form a system on how things run—he realizes that education is the last thing on the owners of Maxfield’s minds, and that he’s a guinea pig in a big experiment.

Can I also just say Thank the Lord this book has no snarky female protagonist? Benson Fisher is completely relatable and I sort of found him funny. His romance with one of the students, Jane, was icing on the cake.

Honestly, do I recommend you go out and buy this book and READ IT IMMEDIATELY? No. Because there is a huge, larger-than-life cliffhanger at the end, you should go out and buy it and, a week before the sequel comes out, read it then!