“Take a Peek” book reviews are short and (possibly) sweet, keeping the commentary brief and providing a little peek at what the book’s about and what I thought.

Synopsis:

(via Goodreads)

J is a student at a school deep in a forest far away from the rest of the world.

J is one of only twenty-six students, all of whom think of the school’s enigmatic founder as their father. J’s peers are the only family he has ever had. The students are being trained to be prodigies of art, science, and athletics, and their life at the school is all they know—and all they are allowed to know.

But J suspects that there is something out there, beyond the pines, that the founder does not want him to see, and he’s beginning to ask questions. What is the real purpose of this place? Why can the students never leave? And what secrets is their father hiding from them?

Meanwhile, on the other side of the forest, in a school very much like J’s, a girl named K is asking the same questions. J has never seen a girl, and K has never seen a boy. As K and J work to investigate the secrets of their two strange schools, they come to discover something even more mysterious: each other.

My Thoughts:

Okay, wow, this book is weird. At first, I even thought it might be TOO weird for me, which is rather hard for a book to achieve. But eventually, I got sucked in by the weirdness and became completely hooked on the story.

So, deep in a remote forest, a group of 26 boys — the Alphabet Boys — have been raised from birth through age 12 in an all-male environment, never even knowing that females exist. It’s all part of a grand experiment by the man they call D.A.D., attempting to prove that without the distraction of the opposite sex, true genius is possible. Crazy, right?

“Ever wonder how you came into being?”

“No,” J said. “We come from the Orchard. The Living Trees.”

The boys are subject to daily Inspections, which they think is a test to see if they’ve been infected with imaginary diseases (such at Vees and Rotts) that they believe are real. The most horrible outcome is for a boy to be declared “spoiled rotten”, which leads to being sent to the Corner — and boys who go to the Corner do not come back. In reality, the Inspections are a way for D.A.D. and the Inspectors to monitor the boys’ every thought and action, alert to hints that they might have stumbled across some sign of the dreaded female. Words like girl, woman, she, and her have no meaning for the Alphabet Boys.

Meanwhile across the forest, a mirror image tower full of girls — the Letter Girls — is engaged in the exact same experiment in reverse. It’s so insane. Eventually, of course, the boys and girls have first contact behind the adults’ backs, and from there, the carefully orchestrated life in the towers spirals quickly out of control.

I ended up fascinating by this story. After somewhat ambivalent feelings early on, I got very caught up. The story really takes off once the girls are introduced at about the halfway point. The ending really went to some wild places. Whoa.

I won’t say more or give anything else away, although I may go comment in a spoiler-y way in my Goodreads review. I really have no idea how to categorize this book. It’s not sci-fi exactly. It’s not futuristic or dystopian — it’s clearly set in our world, just in a remote location controlled by some loony people. It’s a little bit horror in some ways, and has some psychological terror/thriller elements, and quick a bit of mind-fuckery. So yeah, I don’t quite know what to call this book — but I do know that I had a great time reading it!

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The details:

Title: Inspection
Author: Josh Malerman
Publisher: Del Rey
Publication date: March 19, 2019
Length: 400 pages
Genre: I actually have no idea how to categorize this…
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley

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