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. ( )

After the terrifying horror found in Bird Box I was dying to read this book and had high hopes for more heart pounding terror. For that reason Inspection did not quite live up to my hopes.
In a bizarre experiment in which the hypothesis is that knowledge of the opposite sex somehow stifles genius, children who have been obtained by dubious means are kept totally ignorant of the real world, the opposite sex, and are led to believe they grew on trees. The first half of the book is devoted to the boys, and it is at the halfway point that we meet the girls who are raised separately just a stone's throw away. The pace is quite slow and even after the shocking (to them) discovery of the opposite sex there is not much action until the end.

I received an advance copy for review. ( )

There is a tower in the forest, far away from civilization. There are boys there called the alphabet boys. Once upon a time, there were twenty- six boys, but two of them were deemed spoiled rotten and they disappeared...

J is one of the boys, and he looks at the founder as his father, just as the rest of the boys. But, now he's starting to ask questions... What happened the boys that disappeared? Why can't they leave the area? What is really the corner? What he doesn't know is that on the other side of the forest is a girl called K starting to wonder about similar things...

READ THE REST OF THE REVIEW OVER AT FRESH FICTION! ( )

Where to start without including spoilers? The first third of this book was very slow and hard to wade through. I almost gave up but was intrigued by the premise of the book. About half way through it starts to get pretty interesting. Starts to take an even weirder turn, then went back to more of the same. I found myself skimming just to get through.

Also, as others have mentioned there is a critical issue with this book in that it totally disregards sexual preference.

Other small things throughout bothered me; for example, a 10 year old capable of building a 3 story ladder that can hold an adult, from ice (yes, ice!) on the first day of a snow storm?

In summary, if I could go back in time I would skip over this one. ( )

Oh, well. The Bird Box was fabulous and still keeps the bar pretty high for everything else Malerman. And I keep on getting slightly dissappointed. The idea is great in Inspection, but somehow the story didn't really ignite. The kids were too young and the focus was always a bit off the mark for me, I would have seen the spotlight elsewhere. I'll keep on trying nonetheless. ( )