I received a free copy from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you!
The premise is very promising, although it sounds a lot like The Hunger Games. Young people (criminals) are thrown into a dangerous arena - let's call it a Compass Room - to determine whether they are truly evil or not. It's an alternative to the death penalty, and if you can survive the whole month, you'll be released. If the machines decide your brainwaves are evil, you'll be executed on the spot (I'd say in quite cruel ways, where is your ethical committee now?). Average survival, about 25%.
Evalyn enters the Compass Room, knowing she won't survive it. Her new 'friends' aren't any better; murderers, serial rapists, jealous arsonists, etc. The story starts of very good, I was very curious what Evalyn had done and why, and of course I also wanted to figure out how this Compass Room worked. (One thing I found particularly funny was - it might have been changed in the final versions - they used a drill to pass the Blood Brain Barrier! I don't know how they are planning to do that...).
In the second half of the book, all of a sudden this is apparently a NA (New Adult) and I don't see why it was necessary for the story at all. I also thought that the story was leaning too much on some very convenient plot devices
(show spoiler)I didn't like the endings of both plot lines, they really let me down.
But, on the other hand, it was a very nice read (except the type, I hated that, it was impossible to read on an eReader, so I had to read in on my laptop). It might not be the best or most original story, but it was interesting all the same, and I (mostly) enjoyed reading it.
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