She Thought Redemption Was Her Escape, but It Was the Opposite

~Redemption Prep~
By Samuel Miller
Amazon ~ Powell's

Everyone knows Emma. Neesha’s her best friend, Aiden’s her basketball star boyfriend, and Evan’s her shadow, following Emma’s every move. She stands out, which is hard to do at Redemption Prep, a school where every student has been handpicked to attend its remote campus in the forest of Utah. So when she goes missing in plain sight, everyone notices. And everyone becomes a suspect, especially at a school with strict rules: Don’t skip mass. Don’t break curfew. Don’t go into the woods.

Emma’s disappearance ignites an investigation, and Neesha, Aiden, and Evan all want to find her—for different reasons. But they each have their own secrets to hide, and not everyone wants Emma to be found.

As the search continues, the students realize that they’re not the only ones trying to hide something. Redemption Prep has secrets, too—secrets bigger than any of the students could have imagined, and Emma could be the key to finding out the truth… if anyone can find her.


I don't remember how this first came across my radar, though I assume it was from a YA newsletter from my library. After reading the premise, I was interested, but after accidentally reading some up-voted low-score reviews, I was looking forward to some trashy fun. After all, it can't be a disappointment if you're expecting it to be bad, right? All I can say is be careful what you wish for.

Honestly, it wasn't that bad for the majority of it. The mystery/investigation kept me pretty engaged, even knowing a little about the twist going in, and it definitely picked up the pace around the halfway mark. But then you hit that ending and everything really falls apart.

Firstly, the characters are bound to throw a lot of people off right at the start. All of them are extremely self-absorbed, mean-spirited toward their peers, and really the worst of what people often consider teens to be. The exception to this could be Evan, but he's so socially inept (likely on the spectrum and/or clinically psychopathic) that it's hard to get a good read on him, even when you're inside his head. Aiden and Neesha, our other two narrators, are both generally nasty toward their peers (calling them plebes, ignoring or shoving past them) and definitely have ulterior motives for finding Emma. I, personally, didn't have a huge problem reading past our narrators (I've had quite a bit of practice from the last two books I read) but I can see some people having a hard time not being able to 'root for' any of the main characters. At least not for the majority of the story, but I'll get to the ending shortly.

The mystery of Emma going missing was the main thing that kept me going. Like I said, I did know a bit about the major twist of the book, but not how it played out with Emma in particular. However, fans of the general whodunnit mysteries should be wary because this ends up as more of a conspiracy plot. I don't know that I prefer one over the other, since both can have gripping investigations, but unfortunately this conspiracy ends up being outed by two separate, lengthy exposition dumps instead of actually putting clues together. The clues end up leading to the location of the exposition giver, not the answers themselves.

Then there's the fact that the exposition actually cancels out some clues we're given. There's a line fairly early on where there's a blackout and a security guy is talking with a student:

The man used his flashlight to scan the room once more, down to the carpet, up to the exposed stone in the ceiling. [...]
“Sometimes,” he said, the beam hovering two feet over Evan’s head, “I think the people who built this place had never been inside an actual building before.”
Miller, Samuel. Redemption Prep (p. 73)

Knowing what I knew then about the twist, this seemed like interesting foreshadowing. Knowing what I know now, after reading the whole book, it makes zero sense whatsoever. Most other clues can be worked in to the actual twist okay, but this passage just stuck out to me as being clever when I read through, but it ultimately means less than nothing.

But what killed this book for me was the ending as a whole. I'm trying to be spoiler-free here, but I have got to get some things off my chest. The ending, starting with the resolution to Emma's missing person storyline, really picks up speed and action, which is a good thing, but it also throws more and more information and characters at us, which end up having no resolution. As of right now, there are no indications that there will be any sequels, yet we have at least three new storylines that get started within the last couple chapters. And I'm not talking and open-ended ending, I mean we literally have no resolution to new budding storylines.

It would be one thing if we knew that character Group A are presumed free, and all other characters are presumed dead/doomed, but then there's the change-of-heart character (who, again, comes out of left field at the end of the story), and the weirdness that goes on in the secret room (which really wasn't clear reading through it), and the fact that Group A is planning on exposing the big secrets, and, and— Yeah, no, this ending doesn't work at all. The majority of characters don't develop enough for us to be satisfied with their arcs, the investigation doesn't reach a satisfying conclusion because it only leads to exposition dumps, and the new storyline that picks up after the big revelation is full-to-bursting with new characters and plots that get cut off at the end.

If you haven't yet been dissuaded to attempt this book, then go ahead and continue to the end. Otherwise, if you've already read this book, or if you want to know spoilers for it, then please feel free to click this button for spoilers galore:

The big twist is aliens. The school was founded by aliens.

Okay, not really. Well, maybe?

Okay, the first real twist is that Emma never left. She just hid in the church the whole time. This is kind of a neat throwback to Evan's analysis of the sweeps, how they never double-back on places they've already checked. But Evan analyzes patterns all the time—it's his thing—how was Emma to know that they never double-back on sweeps? She's not that analytical. Plus her only confidant was Eddy, who you would think would be held on a tighter leash (or surveillance) after all the experiments and outbursts he's had. And she supposedly snuck out to write message on Neesha's door? HOW?

But the REAL twist is about aliens. The school was founded by a cult that claims to be guided by aliens, the Alohim, who supposedly originally created humanity. This cult is trying to get humanity to evolve to a place that will get the aliens to return and take them 'home' with them. But the Alohim haven't been around for hundreds of years, so the whole "this place was designed by people who'd never been inside a building" line doesn't even make sense, since the school was designed by humans, and there's no real proof that the aliens actually exist besides the info-dump from the school admin taking place in a weird sci-fi torture room.

And Evan's whole ending just...didn't make sense. I mean, I didn't understand what was going on at all. Was he manipulating the video with his mind? Was he actually communicating with the dead? I guess it sorta mirrored what Emma saw/experienced after the drunk driving incident, but this was definitely more internal, like gaining closure for himself, than experiencing another person, so...

But at least Evan got some sort of ending. Everyone else just booked it. Emma (who was a total bitch to Evan, I might add—so much for being super-empathetic) kinda had a reconciliation with Neesha, but was otherwise unchanged for the book. Neesha and Aiden sorta learned to put others ahead of themselves, but only with literal life-or-death circumstances. Peter and Zaza were definitely more interesting than the narrators we got, but that may just be the mystery of not seeing inside their heads. And Eddy might as well have been a Disney pet sidekick for all the communication he offered. While we're left to assume that they're gonna take steps to expose the school, we have no clue how they're going to actually accomplish anything since, you know, they left the only adult on their side behind.

That's right, the ending has one of the maintenance workers, the main guy Yanis, suddenly taking the word of the kids. He's supposedly a good guy who does work for the Kremlin (that just makes me shiver), but was hired here because they pay better? And suddenly these kids go crazy and get violent trying to leave, and he's suddenly listening to them? Granted, they don't talk about aliens (they don't even KNOW about aliens, since that plot dump was for Evan only), but a couple kids saying they're gonna be tortured is enough for him to help them escape. Then he decides to stay behind and help kids who are still at the school, because what else can he do? Oh, I don't know, maybe make sure the kids who escape get to safety? Then come back with authorities? Or with his own elite squad of 'good' KGB agents? But nevermind him, he makes his proclamation about staying and helping the kids, then we never hear from him again. Thanks for giving an interesting character 2 full seconds.

And that's literally how it ends. Evan 'proves himself worthy' to live but with more experiments, Yanis pledges to stay behind to work on the inside, a bus full of kids makes it through a hologram (which, wtf? How many kids are you expecting to stop during their breakneck escape attempts?) to assumed safety, and the cult is gonna keep pushing randomly talented/ascetically pleasing students to evolve higher empathy through rigorous high school curriculum.

You know, no, typing it out like that makes it even more stupid. The cult is trying to get these kids to evolve into super empathetic beings, but their curriculum constantly puts students against each other for top spots. Whether it's sports or academic achievements, there's never an emphasis on team-building or bettering mankind through their breakthroughs. I mean, it's one thing to have our narrators being so self-centered that they ignore the one-for-all messages, but Aiden is specifically made to compete one-on-one to show his deficiencies and called out for lagging behind his teammates, and Neesha's motivation is winning a trophy for an individual's scientific achievement. So, what? Are they focusing on upping their scientific progress and then empathy boosts?

Oh, and finally, the title makes no sense. Or, rather, the name of the school makes no sense as anything other than a coverup. They don't recruit juvenile delinquents. The students don't actually have dark secrets they have to redeem themselves for. Even the evolution thing the cult is developing has nothing to do with atonement or redemption. Maybe it would make sense if there were any actual religious activities/counseling going on, but nope. One could argue that saving the masses from normality is a form of redemption, but that's stretching the definition a bit, don't ya think?

Overall, an interesting concept with poor execution. There's some good suspense in the beginning, and the action scenes towards the end had some good description and pacing, but the ending (or lack thereof) and the characters' arcs really don't hold up upon review. I might return for a sequel, though as of right now there is no indication of any in the works, but only if Evan and/or Yanis is a featured character (oh, and throw in that DBZ kid, too!) and the plot promises to right some of the logical failings of the school. Then again, with all the negativity this book's garnered with its off-putting characters, poorly resolved mystery, and completely cut-off ending, it might be beyond redemption.