Fans of James Dashner's Maze Runner series will thoroughly enjoy Erin Bowman's dystopian tale.
The boys in the village of Claysoot vanish on their 18th birthday and are never seen again. The mysterious "Heist" forces all the boys to grow up quickly; they become men at 15 and become eligible for "slatings," where they periodically sleep with different girls to reproduce so they won't die out. Whenever a boy escapes over the Wall surrounding the village, he comes back "a charcoaled mess, burned and lifeless." But after Gray Weathersby loses his brother to the Heist, he, along with the girl to whom he's been slated, finds a way over the Wall--in order to avoid the same fate in the coming year and to solve the mystery of his origins.
Readers will root for Gray's pursuit of the truth as they did with Jonas in The Giver because escaping into the unknown is better than surrendering to the fate you do know. The Heist generates a level of anxiety akin to the reaping in The Hunger Games, and Bowman takes readers beyond the Wall to a jarring domed city populated with an abundance of men, young and old, and new dangers to face.
This engrossing debut novel moves at breakneck speed with puzzles to keep readers guessing and an ending that will leave them wanting more. --Adam Silvera, Paper Lantern Lit intern and former bookseller