I saw this cover on Net­Gal­ley and my imme­di­ate thought was ‘Oooo’ and ‘Want’. Luck­ily, Harper Collins was kind enough to grant me my request (even though I failed at get­ting this review out before the pub­li­ca­tion date).

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.

I pretty much fin­ished Vari­ant in one sit­ting. A fairly sus­pense­ful read, with an easy going nar­ra­tive, it def­i­nitely had its creepy moments. I don’t often read books that have the creep fac­tor as I tend to stay away from hor­ror, but Vari­ant was just the right amount of unnerv­ing for me with­out any blood or gore.

It isn’t long before you get the feel­ing that things aren’t quite right about Max­field Acad­emy. Secluded and iso­lated, a social worker who drops you off but won’t come in with you, chil­dren bang­ing and shout­ing through the win­dows at you as you arrive, warn­ings from two stu­dents who run past you at the front door. Yeah, I’d be unset­tled too Benson.

Though I was very inter­ested in the story, I felt pretty indif­fer­ent towards the char­ac­ters; aside from Becky, who I was curi­ous about since her loy­al­ties aren’t quite clear. Benson is a lik­able enough hero. He can fight, stands up to bul­lies, has deter­mi­na­tion and is prob­a­bly clever enough to attempt an escape, but he’s also for­get­table. His strong desire for free­dom all hap­pened far too quickly, yet he doesn’t actively do much about it either.

I was puz­zled when none of the other kids even tried to leave, a lot of them seemed to have just accepted the sit­u­a­tion. It’s pri­mar­ily fear keep­ing the chil­dren from work­ing together and walk­ing out, which I could actu­ally under­stand, given how chil­dren are dragged from their beds in the mid­dle of the night, never to be seen again, merely for mis­be­hav­ing. But I found it strange that Ben­son is the only one even ques­tion­ing it all. How­ever, there is a plot twist mid­way through the book that could account everyone’s, includ­ing Benson’s, actions in the book.

Vari­ant keeps you guess­ing, and does a com­plete 180 on you part of the way through. Aside from get­ting com­pletely side­tracked by overly long descrip­tions of paint­balling, it’s good read — a dis­con­cert­ing story with enough action and mys­tery to keep the reader enter­tained, though with a cliffhanger that will annoy some read­ers. I was unaware this was a series when I first picked it up, and while I’ll hap­pily read the sequel, I think it prob­a­bly could have worked just as well, if not bet­ter, as a stand alone.

*Many thanks to Harper Collins Pub­lish­ers and Net­Gal­ley for mak­ing this avail­able for review*