April says, "'Variant' isn't just your average-boy-coming-of-age-at-crazy-private-school story."

Variant

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.

April says:
"Variant has found itself in a sort of undefined location on my bookshelf.  The plot description on the back bills the book as yet another YA dystopian.  But the book doesn't take place in a speculative fiction world like a William Gibson novel; this book takes place in our time, in our world.  So it shifts toward Christopher Farnsworth and his supernatural conspiracy theories, but again, this doesn't quite fit the bill for Variant.

Benson has been tossed from foster family to foster family since he was five.  He couldn't conjure his mother's image in his head if he tried, and even the idea of recalling the names of each successive family member is ridiculous.  To be brief, Benson has ties to only one being in this world.  Himself.  So when he finds a private school in the Southwest that will give him a full scholarship, he hops on the first train outta Dodge to that ideal ivy league private school every kid dreams about.

Only there's a barbed wire fence outside the school.  And that fence surrounds an intimidating brick wall.  And that wall encompasses the campus.  And the woman who picked him up at the airport doesn't come in the building.  In fact, there are no adults in the building.  It's like Lord of the Flies in there (with electricity and running water,of course).  Each student has much the same story as Benson--no parents, no family, no one to wonder where they might have gone.

The story unfolds more twists than one might imagine at first.  It's not as simple as a psychotic social/science experiment of teenagers left to fend for themselves.  And told from a male character's point of view, Variant isn't just your average-boy-coming-of-age-at-crazy-private-school story.  Benson rebels like any redeemable character and he's not shaken beyond repair when the few truths he has are taken from him.

The book is a solid recommend for anyone trying to find a 'boy book'.  And it leaves the reader hungry for the next book, which might help the dystopian idea more..."