As we got closer I could see behind the sandstone a curved concrete building: a purpose-built structure. But still no fence, no wire. Not a bar in sight. For this, I’d been told that morning, I should be grateful. This was a ‘lifeline…a last chance’. That is what the judge said.
Daniel is a sixteen-year-old drug dealer and he’s going to jail.
Then, suddenly, he’s not.
A courtroom intervention. A long car ride to a big country house. Other ‘gifted delinquents’: the elusive, devastating Rachel, and Alex, so tightly wound he seems about to shatter.
So where are they? It’s not a school, despite the ‘lessons’ with the headsets and changing images. It’s not a psych unit—not if the absence of medication means anything. It’s not a jail, because Daniel’s free to leave. Or that’s what they tell him.
He knows he and the others are part of an experiment.
But he doesn’t know who’s running it or what they’re trying to prove. And he has no idea what they’re doing to him.
A fascinating concept, but one which left me with far more questions than it answered and which was – ultimately – rather frustrating.
Our story focuses on teenage Daniel. He manages to avoid jail for selling drugs by agreeing to enter a facility. Like Daniel, we learn about the facility and those inside as he experiences it. Ultimately, however, the intriguing idea of exploring social engineering and the behaviour of pharmaceutical companies didn’t fully pay off.
I’m grateful to NetGalley for granting me access to this and it was a fascinating idea. Unfortunately, we never really get the answers we want and the children themselves feel as if information is being withheld. Knowing that Daniel was an adult looking back on this incident meant we had a suspicion how things might go.