Redemption Prep by Samuel Miller

Abstract

Reviewed by: Redemption Prep by Samuel Miller Alaine Martaus Miller, Samuel Redemption Prep. Tegen/HarperCollins, 2020 [416p] Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-06-266203-3 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-06-266205-7 $9.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 9-12 Emma Donahue has vanished from Redemption Prep, an elite boarding school isolated in the forest of Utah. Now three teens with connections to the missing girl will work together to find her: Neesha, the overachieving roommate; Aiden, the golden boy basketball star; and Evan, the chess prodigy who’s taken to following Emma around. Meanwhile the school, already rule-bound and shrouded in mystery, employs its own in-house detective, tasked less with finding Emma and more with obscuring what everyone thinks they know. Threats of violence and the slow revelation of long-buried secrets only make Emma’s classmates more determined to find her, though, as it becomes clear there’s more to her disappearance than a personal breakdown. Readers looking for a unique take on the isolated-house mystery, with a bizarre setting and a cast of unstable characters, will enjoy losing themselves in this strange yet compelling tale of drugs, power, and the future of the human race. Flashbacks, journal entries, interviews, and narrated chapters split between the three main characters to create layered complexity and leave the reader room to piece together the real story. Characterization plays intriguingly with stereotypes, especially as characters struggle against the burden of family pressures and the curse of being gifted. The people and the mystery that binds them will draw readers in and keep them turning pages, and a lack of clear resolution at the novel’s end leaves room for possible sequels. Copyright © 2020 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois