Variant, by Robinson Wells GUEST REVIEW.

Hello! This week I decided to spare you guys from my writing, so I asked my fellow bloggy people Rachel and Megan over at 'Read.Write.Ramble' to write a guest review for the blog! It's one of my personal favorite book blogs so, if you guys haven't seen it yet, go now. Or after reading the review. Whatevs. Click here and prepare for much book awesomeness (and a side of epic fangirling).

Just for the record, I thought this book was awesome too! Anyway enough from me, here goes the review:



Rachel: This is one of those books that I think deserves so much more attention than it gets. It seems to have flown under the radar since it was released, and I would love to see it gain more readers. Variant is strange and creepy and action-packed, and I wish more people would appreciate its awesomeness.

Megan: Definitely! This book had me feeling so paranoid!  Picture living in a boarding school where there are no adults, but cameras watch your every move and punishment means not eating for two days. Sounds kind of terrible right? I've always wanted to go to a boarding school, but I most definitely do NOT want to go to Maxfield Academy. 

Rachel: The absence of adults in this book is so weird. There are so many YA books where the parents/teachers/etc are just kind of in the background or whatever, but there are no adult characters in Variant. The students at the school are left to do everything by themselves--they even have to teach themselves--while a bunch of powerful people they don't even know control everything about their lives.

Megan: Yeah, you would think that having no adults around would be awesome and the school would turn into one giant party, but NO. Anyway, some of my favorite scenes in the book were the paint ball games. They were just really intense and I loved the fact that Benson basically had no clue what he was doing, because let's be honest, if I was forced to play paint ball, that would totally be me!

Rachel: Ooh, yes! The paint ball games were really cool. In the beginning of the book, it seems like there isn't going to be much action or anything. You think the book is just going to be about a bunch of kids going to school and whatever. But the paint ball games are introduced pretty early on, and they provide some SUPER INTENSE ACTION that I totally wasn't expecting.

Megan: I really liked how everything about this book was unexpected. As soon as Benson started to kind of settle in and get used to everything and he started to think he understood how things were going to work, BAM. Something else happens that completely changes everything. It completely left me guessing because there were so many of those moments, right up until the end of the book.

Rachel: There were crazy plot twists throughout the entire book. Even the last page had something totally unexpected. Reading Variant was such a weird experience. I literally had NO idea what the next sentence/page/chapter would bring.

Megan: The ending definitely left me wanting to read the sequel. My reaction to it was basically "What the heck is happening and what did I just READ?" I can't say this book made me want to go to a boarding school any less, but I definitely wouldn't consider going to Maxfield Academy. There's some weird stuff that goes on there. 

Rachel: Yeah, seriously. Like, congrats Robison Wells on writing the CREEPIEST BOOK EVER. I was totally freaked out and unsettled the whole time I was reading this. Which might not sound all that great, but let me assure you, it was AWESOME.

Megan: So basically, if you haven't read Variant yet, what are you waiting for?