Inspection by Josh Malerman is an interesting look at genius and distractions of the opposite sex. This is my third Josh Malerman book and man are his stories out there, which I like. This story is best if you know as little as possible going in. I think this story is ruined by its book cover synopsis. It covers 75% of the story. I was waiting for a twist and a greater meaning than the one we got. The climax is big and went a lot further than I thought the story was going. We get two perspectives J a boy and K a girl. J is the first perspective, and he is the least interesting of the two. Then the characters meet. After that, we follow K until the meeting. The story does repeat itself a little too often. I feel the plot is brilliant. However, the execution was lacking. There were a couple of moments when I was just bored. I felt frustrated with the material.

The Plot: J is a boy. He grew up in an experiment to find genius. The experiment sought genius without the distraction of the opposite sex or religion. He is part of it with 26 other boys. A and Z have been taken out of the experiment. Everything is designed to keep the secret hidden. They have a writer on hand to write morals of right and wrong. The story never mentions a place or gender. The writer has a lot of doubts. He writes a story involving a woman. He distributes it behind The Parenthood’s back, the organization that controls the experiment. J reads the entire story, and when The Parenthood finds out he is called for inspection and lies. He now knows women exist. He keeps coming to the woods sure that something is watching him. He gets a surprise visit from K, a girl. She sneaks around at night from the woods. She is from a camp that is all girls and was not told about boys. This secret will lead him to question everything.

What I Liked: the story concepts are really smart and out of the box. I liked the character of K and how she found out about the camp of boys. The corner reveal was shocking and well done. I liked the ending and was surprised just how far the secrets revealed can go. I wanted to know more about M.O.M. and D.A.D. before they started the experiment and their motivation. I liked the two writers for the Parenthood. Both are bitter about putting out such mediocre books for each gender. I did like a line at the end proving the experiment worked and they were genius-minded.

What I Disliked: The synopsis gave way too much away. I felt like we shouldn’t know about the sister school of just girls. I wanted more twists and turns. This book does have a few. I thought they were leading us to an idea where all characters are one gender and told they are whatever. But that was not the case. K is by far the more interesting character. I feel she should have been first. She finds out organically, unlike J who reads a book.

Recommendations: I think the story is brilliant with a lot of possibilities. I just did not like where the Malerman went with it. I cannot recommend it. The story reminded me a little bit about Wool by Hugh Howley and how the secrets were revealed. I wanted to like this book more but it didn’t connect for me. I have rated Josh Malerman’s past two books Bird Box and A House at the Bottom of the Lake both five stars. However, this book didn’t do it for me.

Rating: I rated Inspection by Josh Malerman 3 out of 5 stars.