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helaisme's review
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
dembury's review
2.0
4/3/2019 Edit: I'm changing my rating from 3 to 2 stars after more thinking. I've added in a little more in my review, but essentially I don't think Malerman's interesting idea for "Inspection" was well executed or excuses his clumsy pacing and characterizations, nor do I think he wrote a well-thought out or relevant narrative on anything pertaining to gender or sexuality. If anything, I think "Inspection" feels more dated than its 2019 release year. If you want a good Malerman story, go read "Bird Box"-it's way better.
I truly don’t know how I feel about “Inspection”. On one hand, I can honestly say I’ve never read a book quite like it. Malerman's story idea is one that is both enthralling and disturbing, and throughout the whole book I was very eager to see how things turned out. The ending was quite...dramatic. Harsh. Bloody. A blurb for the book calls the ending “Tarantino-esque” and I think that’s appropriate.
However, the pacing of the book felt off kilter, too. POVs are unevenly distributed, and really unsympathetic, droll characters are given the limelight (looking at you, Warren), and it takes away from the kids. It almost feels to me like Malerman had this really cool idea for a book and started outlining it, but didn’t spend enough time refining and really digging into parts of it. Portions of “Inspection” make for a very interesting suspense/horror novel, but those portions are kinda bogged down by unrefined, unrealized bits.
I'm also a little disappointed at the extreme black or white-ness of the story: because it revolves around a group of boys and a group of girls who are raised without the knowledge of the other, I thought gender and sexuality would be more of a narrative. But when it comes down to it, Malerman basically writes that boys are boys because they have a penis and girls are girls because they don't. It just feels a little dated and unaware.
I truly wish I had liked this book better because I've been looking forwards to it for some time! I think Malerman has potential (as seen with "Bird Box") but "Inspection" doesn't do it for me.
I truly don’t know how I feel about “Inspection”. On one hand, I can honestly say I’ve never read a book quite like it. Malerman's story idea is one that is both enthralling and disturbing, and throughout the whole book I was very eager to see how things turned out. The ending was quite...dramatic. Harsh. Bloody. A blurb for the book calls the ending “Tarantino-esque” and I think that’s appropriate.
However, the pacing of the book felt off kilter, too. POVs are unevenly distributed, and really unsympathetic, droll characters are given the limelight (looking at you, Warren), and it takes away from the kids. It almost feels to me like Malerman had this really cool idea for a book and started outlining it, but didn’t spend enough time refining and really digging into parts of it. Portions of “Inspection” make for a very interesting suspense/horror novel, but those portions are kinda bogged down by unrefined, unrealized bits.
I'm also a little disappointed at the extreme black or white-ness of the story: because it revolves around a group of boys and a group of girls who are raised without the knowledge of the other, I thought gender and sexuality would be more of a narrative. But when it comes down to it, Malerman basically writes that boys are boys because they have a penis and girls are girls because they don't. It just feels a little dated and unaware.
I truly wish I had liked this book better because I've been looking forwards to it for some time! I think Malerman has potential (as seen with "Bird Box") but "Inspection" doesn't do it for me.
pam2375's review
5.0
OHHHHHHHHHHHH, what happens when you are running an 'experiment' that keeps the boys from the girls and the boys and girls are only referred to as letters? Do you think that it is all going to turn out w/o consequences?
Run don't walk to your nearest book store and pre-order this one today!
Many thanks to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballentine for this advanced readers copy.
Run don't walk to your nearest book store and pre-order this one today!
Many thanks to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballentine for this advanced readers copy.
brandyleigh_reads's review
3.0
I enjoyed this story more than I was expecting however I wish the author would have explored the possibility of a LGBTQ+ character.
nonesensed's review
2.0
J lives with the other Alphabet Boys in a tower surrounded by the Yard and endless pine trees. As far as J knows, he and his brothers were born from one of those trees, though he's never been able to find which one. He spends his days on studying, training and leisure, in a predictable pattern. But J and his brothers are about to turn 12. Apparently, this is an important milestone because things are changing: the boys are about to move rooms and D.A.D. is acting a little strange, handing out notebooks for the boys to write all their thoughts in. It's enough upheaval to make some worry about being sent to the Corner, like their lost brothers A and Z once were. J is extra unsettled, because he keeps seeing something in the Yard at night, watching him.
Okay. So. The build-up here is great. The mystery is solid, not too vague to lose your interest but not too obvious. There are plenty of creepy scenes and the ending was solid. But...this is the most heteronormative and poorly researched book I've read in a long time. To explain why, I'm going to have to dive into spoilers, but to summarize: if you want to write a book that explores gender identity and how human sexuality develops, maybe at least have one beta reader who's not cis and not straight.
Let's start with the experiment's set-up: I can buy the motivation for the experiment. People have weird ideas about human psychology and development all the time. But did "M.O.M." and "D.A.D." reject all previous research on child development and sexuality? How did they stop the kids from discovering sexuality all on their own? I know it's squicky to think about, but you do know children do that, right? Have you ever spent any longer amount of time with a child? There are plenty of things no one teaches them to do that they still do. "Take your hand out of your pants, don't do that in public" is definitely a thing you have to tell kids when they're as young as 3-4 years old. While it makes sense that these boys and girls have no concept of reproductive sex, the book choosing to focus on human sexuality without in any way explaining how these 11-12 year olds seem to have no clue about how pleasure goes together with their genitalia. It's a bit of a plot hole.
The second, even more glaring omission is that no one mentions the possibility of any of the children growing up to be attracted to their own gender. I get that they're all growing up as siblings, but teenagers get crushes on their teachers all the time, and the boys are so many that they might not all develop sibling relationships as much as "class mates" relationships. The issue of gender identity being a different thing from biological sex is a thing that could have been very interesting to explore here, too (would you know that you're trans if you're born into a world where you're denied knowledge of more than one gender existing?).
I'm not demanding all books have LGBT characters, but it's Twilight Zone weird as a bisexual person to read a book where children are kept gender segregated so They Won't Be Distracted By The Sexy yet the people in charge of that separation don't even plan for this huge possible hitch in their whole plan. It's like the author either forgot or doesn't believe us non-straight folks exist naturally. As if you can keep children nice and hetero as long as you keep them away from society, and then have them not realize they're hetero if you keep them away from the opposite sex.
Yeah. Wild.
Then we have the moments of girls and boys seeing each other for the first time. The kids are eleven to twelve years old as this happens, yet for some reason K both thinks it's noteworthy that J is flat-chested and describes his voices as different from all other girls she's heard speak. Are the Letter Girls fed hormones so they've all started developing breasts by the age of 10? Why else would K think it's odd that another pre-teen girl has a flat chest? And while I could buy that J's cadence of speech could be different from K's, since they've had different role models of speech growing up, the writing sort of implies that J's voice is deeper than K's....at the age of 12. When does the author think kids' voices change? Yes, kids, plural. All kids' voices change when they hit puberty, some of the changes are just more obvious than others. Some kids' voices crack early on, but if so it would have been nice for the story to acknowledge that in some way to prepare the reader for J being an early bloomer.
Speaking of which, I can understand the girls and boys having different haircuts due to the Parenthood, girls all long and boys all short. That all the men working for the Parenthood apparently have to or have chosen to grow out their facial hair isn't a plot hole. The constant notes on how much taller the men are than the women might just be because the Parenthood happened to employ really tall men and really short women for some reason. But I seem to recall (and I could be wrong here, my memory isn't perfect) K thinking of the Alphabet Boys as generally taller than the Letter Girls, and that left me scratching my head. Grown cis men tend to, on average, be taller than cis women, yet cis girls tend to grow taller earlier than cis boys. If anything, K should have been noting how short the Alphabet Boys were.
Then there's the romance between K and J. That K finds J fascinating after observing him for a year, I get. He's a new person in her very closed-off world. But J going from screaming in utter terror at the sight of K to Instant Attraction, while dealing with his whole world falling apart, felt forced. Especially when his scatterbrained behavior the next day is framed more as his near obsession with K affecting his behavior, rather than the terrible truth of his life situation.
Also, why in the world did J and K start with a kiss to show their affection? It takes one quick google search to show that kissing definitely is cultural and in no way a universal human instinct. I don't have beef with them getting physically affectionate with each other, but if they've been kept from all kinds of info on human sexuality, why would they go for a kiss at all? Hugging, yes. Touching, yes. Smashing lips together, why? So many questions!
Basically, this is not a bad book in the sense of pacing and creepiness. The thing that took me out of the story, again and again, is that the book takes place in a world where Everyone Is Born Heterosexual, the rest of us don't seem to exist, and the human biology and gender presentations we got in here are notably different from reality. If that doesn't bother you and you like horror, I think this is the book for you! If that irks you, like it does me, maybe check out something else.
Okay. So. The build-up here is great. The mystery is solid, not too vague to lose your interest but not too obvious. There are plenty of creepy scenes and the ending was solid. But...this is the most heteronormative and poorly researched book I've read in a long time. To explain why, I'm going to have to dive into spoilers, but to summarize: if you want to write a book that explores gender identity and how human sexuality develops, maybe at least have one beta reader who's not cis and not straight.
The second, even more glaring omission is that no one mentions the possibility of any of the children growing up to be attracted to their own gender. I get that they're all growing up as siblings, but teenagers get crushes on their teachers all the time, and the boys are so many that they might not all develop sibling relationships as much as "class mates" relationships. The issue of gender identity being a different thing from biological sex is a thing that could have been very interesting to explore here, too (would you know that you're trans if you're born into a world where you're denied knowledge of more than one gender existing?).
I'm not demanding all books have LGBT characters, but it's Twilight Zone weird as a bisexual person to read a book where children are kept gender segregated so They Won't Be Distracted By The Sexy yet the people in charge of that separation don't even plan for this huge possible hitch in their whole plan. It's like the author either forgot or doesn't believe us non-straight folks exist naturally. As if you can keep children nice and hetero as long as you keep them away from society, and then have them not realize they're hetero if you keep them away from the opposite sex.
Yeah. Wild.
Then we have the moments of girls and boys seeing each other for the first time. The kids are eleven to twelve years old as this happens, yet for some reason K both thinks it's noteworthy that J is flat-chested and describes his voices as different from all other girls she's heard speak. Are the Letter Girls fed hormones so they've all started developing breasts by the age of 10? Why else would K think it's odd that another pre-teen girl has a flat chest? And while I could buy that J's cadence of speech could be different from K's, since they've had different role models of speech growing up, the writing sort of implies that J's voice is deeper than K's....at the age of 12. When does the author think kids' voices change? Yes, kids, plural. All kids' voices change when they hit puberty, some of the changes are just more obvious than others. Some kids' voices crack early on, but if so it would have been nice for the story to acknowledge that in some way to prepare the reader for J being an early bloomer.
Speaking of which, I can understand the girls and boys having different haircuts due to the Parenthood, girls all long and boys all short. That all the men working for the Parenthood apparently have to or have chosen to grow out their facial hair isn't a plot hole. The constant notes on how much taller the men are than the women might just be because the Parenthood happened to employ really tall men and really short women for some reason. But I seem to recall (and I could be wrong here, my memory isn't perfect) K thinking of the Alphabet Boys as generally taller than the Letter Girls, and that left me scratching my head. Grown cis men tend to, on average, be taller than cis women, yet cis girls tend to grow taller earlier than cis boys. If anything, K should have been noting how short the Alphabet Boys were.
Then there's the romance between K and J. That K finds J fascinating after observing him for a year, I get. He's a new person in her very closed-off world. But J going from screaming in utter terror at the sight of K to Instant Attraction, while dealing with his whole world falling apart, felt forced. Especially when his scatterbrained behavior the next day is framed more as his near obsession with K affecting his behavior, rather than the terrible truth of his life situation.
Also, why in the world did J and K start with a kiss to show their affection? It takes one quick google search to show that kissing definitely is cultural and in no way a universal human instinct. I don't have beef with them getting physically affectionate with each other, but if they've been kept from all kinds of info on human sexuality, why would they go for a kiss at all? Hugging, yes. Touching, yes. Smashing lips together, why? So many questions!
Basically, this is not a bad book in the sense of pacing and creepiness. The thing that took me out of the story, again and again, is that the book takes place in a world where Everyone Is Born Heterosexual, the rest of us don't seem to exist, and the human biology and gender presentations we got in here are notably different from reality. If that doesn't bother you and you like horror, I think this is the book for you! If that irks you, like it does me, maybe check out something else.
gkelch's review against another edition
2.0
This book took way too long to get going. I was at least half way through before anything happened and I almost DNF it. Most of the action happens in the last few pages of the book and feels rushed. Also, way too much of the characters' inner monologues for me but not enough character building and differentiation between the kids to get me invested in them. I was expecting to like this because Bird Box really grabbed my attention and the description sounded like such an interesting idea, but it wasn't for me.
kuranes's review against another edition
3.0
Very enjoyable! Interesting that it wasn’t about one of the senses though. :)
patrickreads89's review
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
2.0
straylight's review against another edition
3.0
"A social experiment gone terribly wrong..." this book started out just a bit slow for me. However, it does pick up and lead to a relatively satisfactory ending. I would have loved to hear a bit more of the background of the various characters, and from where the whole experiment developed, but the overall story is good none the less. I have heard some concern about how the main characters' personalities seem to change abruptly, but given the path of the story, I could see how this might be reasonable, to some degree, at least.
harmonj3's review
challenging
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
I nearly set this book down because the first 130+ pages did not grip me. The prose is a little odd and it really just wasn’t what I had expected. That said, the second act of this book is worth it. I really love that we get a very small glimpse into had everything came to be through the flashbacks and I was really impressed with the 180 this book pulled on me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Child abuse, and Murder