Kids: Masterminds

Warning: Post contains Spoilers!

Review By: Dilan Mehta

Review:

This book is a great mystery and sci-fi read. Gordon Korman's classic, witty writing style is showm throughout this book. It's thrilling and exciting at the same time, and you find yourself wondering about the mystery while your reading. I like how Korman uses different chapters with different perspectives from each character, and not just one narrator. The idea itself is fresh and creative, too, and I like how Korman uses his amazing writing to craft a story that has twists and turns every page, and how he describes everything with such compelling language. Gordon Korman often puts in cliffhangers and other writing techniques, making this book a refined and perfect masterpiece of writing. The charcaters are also pretty relatable, and full of human-like qualities, which is something all characters of books should have.

Summary:

The book is about Eli, Amber, Malik, Hector, and Tori. Eli bikes to the edge of the city with his friend Randy, but suddenly gets very sick fast and has to get picked up by the mysterious Surety, the police force of Serenity. He stays in the hospital for a bit and then finds out that Randy is leaving Serenity. Serenity is where they live. It's supposed to be a perfect place to live. It's an ideal community, with no crimes, no poverty, no murders, etc. They value hard work and honesty. When Randy leaves, he's supposed to be going to help his grandparents on a farm. Later, when Eli finds a secret note that Randy left him, he says he's actually going to boarding school, and that something very screwy is going on in Serenity. And something is. Eli shows the note to his father, who has him take pills that make him forget about the note. Eli doesn't take them and realizes that his father is trying to wipe out his memory of the note. The kids find out that the plastic factory isn't actually making orange traffic cones. They sneak into the building and find that the building has real Wi-Fi and internet, to block them from knowing about anything bad. They sneak in and find out that they have been monitored from the day they were born. Everything they ever did was there. After they escape, they find out that the entire community of Serenity is a lie. 11 of the kids are cloned from criminal masterminds, and their parents are just scientists. This is part of an experiment called Project Osiris. The question was, is someone born bad, or can they be good if raised in the right environment? The kids are lab rats. Felix Frieden, Eli's dad, controls all of it. His real name is Felix Hammerstrom. The five make plans to escape the town and promise to rescue the others after. They take out the satellite dish on top of a truck that generates the barrier which makes them feel terribly sick, and in the process, Hector supposedly dies, but probably comes back. The kids meet up with Randy, who isn't part of Osiris, just a regular kid, and the book ends.

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for the next Look In A Book post! 😄