Masterminds audiobook

As usual, Gordon Korman delivers a fast-paced, well-crafted adventure full of creative twists and surprises. Eli lives in Serenity, New Mexico, which is so perfect it seems too good to be true. Everybody has a nice house. The schools are great. There is zero crime and zero unemployment. Eli has never left his hometown, but one day he discovers something that shakes his world. Serenity is not what it seems. He and his friends can’t trust anyone – not their neighbors, definitely not their parents. This perfect little world hides a dark secret linked to some of the world’s most infamous criminal masterminds. Hooked yet? You should be! This is a perfect summer read for mystery and adventure lovers.

This is a totally riveting page-turner of a conspiracy thriller for kids, in which several young teens living in an isolated, seemingly idyllic community find out that they have a shocking link to some notorious criminal masterminds. I was halfway through this book when I decided I must get hold of the two sequels immediately.

YAY! It's conspiracy fiction for kids and sooooo much fun. I don't want to say too much but I giggled out loud in glee when I got to the key aspect of the conspiracy. Kids are going to love this. I'm ready for the sequel right now!

** spoiler alert ** Ever lived in a idyllic community, these kids have. Only, the community is not so perfect? This book is an action packed mystery book. This is a very good book that has you anxious about what is going to happen next on every page. This book takes place in an idyllic community, meaning peaceful and happy, called Serenity. This is a very small town with a population barely over a hundred. Everybody that lives there have a swimming pool and a basketball hoop. All the adults have a job and nobody is homeless. Perfect place to live in right? Wrong. When one of the kids, Randy, leave unexpectedly the whole town,especially the kids are sad. Then one day Eli and Tori find a note from Randy saying that some of the kids are special and that something screwy is going on in the town. When Tori and Eli told a boy named Malik and he gives them some information about the cargo trucks sending out the Traffic Cones from The Serenity Plastic Works, the biggest building in Serenity. Malik says that the cargo trucks are the same three trucks, with the same cones in them, and that they don’t even go anywhere. This leads all three kids to believe that the Plastic Works don’t make any plastic at all and is just a big cover up for something much bigger. They make a big plan and they meet up at night by the plastic works and Malik's friend, Hector, follows him there and he gets dragged into this whole situation. Eli takes his tablet and they find out that they are tampering with the internet and only the Plastic Works has real internet. There they create a plan to break into the Plastic works while avoiding the Surety (the security guards for the plastic works). When the four kids break into the plastics works they find out that they are being watched very carefully and they are part of a secret project called project Osiris. Project Osiris is a project that makes exact clones of criminal masterminds in real life to see if they are born evil or their surroundings affect their thoughts. This is why the peaceful town of Serenity was created. Project Osiris was shut down by the government but the head scientists went on with the project making a city in the middle of nowhere that nobody know of. This is where the kids learn that their parents aren't really their parents and that all the adults have been lying to them their whole lives. They decided to try to escape from the town so that they could live there lives. Tori tells her best friend, Amber about it and she agrees to go too. They make a plan to escape from the town and they leave on something called Serenity day. They succeed and find some train tracks and hop onto a freight train headed to Colorado to find Randy. In Colorado they go to the private school and find Randy at the private school. This is where the story ends then continues onto a new book. The conflict is person vs person, because in the book five of the children are rebelling against the adults who the children found out was their enemy. The theme of the book is that nothing is perfect, because in the book the supposed perfect town of Serenity was nothing of what it seemed to be. It was the exact opposite and turned out to be sort of a prison for the cloned children. The setting adds to the conflict because Serenity is supposed to be a peaceful place where the moral codes are about honesty and integrity. This adds to the conflict because it make the kids even more enraged that Serenity is all about Honesty and the adults have been lying to them the whole time. The 1st person point of view affects the story because every chapter is a different character being the narrator. This is important in the story because it helps you understand the character more and their thoughts rather than a narrator just telling the story. I was surprised when the kids broke into the Plastic Works and found out about Project Osiris, because I had no idea that Serenity was a fabricated town. This caught me with a major twist and it added more interest to the story. I was angry about how the adults have been lying to the kids their whole lives even though they have taught kids and honor honesty. This angers me because it is hypocritical and I felt sympathetic with how the kids in the story were feeling. I rate this book four stars, because it was a great book but I did not like how it ended in a cliffhanger that continues onto another book. Otherwise the book is great and would be rated five stars. I would recommend this book to people who enjoy mystery and action books. Remember, even if something seems perfect, it never is!

Update: I will be rereading this (AGAIN) when my physical copies of the last 2 books arrive! Hopefully I can have a more comprehensive but still non-spoilery review afterward.---I think this is my 5th time reading this. Still love it! Must read for middle-grade readers! I have to agree with James Dashner's blurb that it's hard to explain how much he likes this book without spoiling it. Just know that the plot twist will blow your mind. Even though I've read it so many times, there are still parts that make me jolt and try to run for my life (mentally obviously). Highly recommended.

I think that the book was outstanding it was intriguing and unpredictable. Gordon Korman was very good at explaining what was happening where it was taking place and how it affected everyone else in the story. The balance of action and suspense was also incredible. This book was an easy 5 stars for me.

That was rly good. Cant wait 2 read the next one

** spoiler alert ** Masterminds was a good book overall. It had action/adventure and mystery to the book, which I really like. The story takes place in a peaceful town in New Mexico called Serenity. There is no criminal activity in Serenity-it is always peaceful. One day Eli and his friend Randy go out bike riding past the Serenity border-line and Eli gets pretty sick, but Randy doesn't. This leads to Randy's department, him leaving Serenity. Randy leaves a note behind saying something screwy was happening in Serenity and there were "special kids." This leads to Eli, Tori, Malik, Hector, and Amber to figure out where Randy was departed to and what was screwy.Eli is doing his Serenity day project on the Boston Tea Party late at night during a thunderstorm. He reads on an article that the British people and Americans sit down, have tea, and discuss matters. Lightning strikes around his house, and when he looks back down on his iPad, he sees a whole new article saying that the Americans dressed as Mohawk Indians and dumped tea into the ocean, which leads him to thinking that they are not being told everything.When Eli, Tori, and Hector break into the Plastic Works Factory, they find that they are not human, but clones of evil mastermind geniuses. They then find out that there parents are not their parents and there are some not "special kids" in town. They soon try and escape and get horribly sick again, which leads them to believe there is a chip inside them that sends a wireless signal whenever they get past the border of Serenity to make them sick. Then they think of an escape plan.I would recommend this book to people who like action/adventure and mystery.

Originally posted here at In the Senter of it AllGenre: Adventure AR level: 5.2Grade appropriate: 4th and upRATING BREAKDOWN: Overall: 5/5-- Gordon Korman is a genius! Who wouldn't want to live in a town like Serenity? But what does it take to have the perfect town? Kind of scary to think about. How do you keep everybody in line? This is my genre and Gordon Korman has mastered the adventure story! Creativity: 5/5-- Completely creative! So close to reality. This story could totally happen! But who would think to do this? Subtle differences from the real world. The pledge ends "One nation under God, indivisible, with unity and gladness for all."Characters: 5/5-- Loved them! Engrossing: 5/5Writing: 5/5Appeal to kids: 5/5-- They’ll love it! It’s already checked out of my library. Appropriate length to tell the story: 5/5CONTENT: Language: noneSexuality: none Violence: mild-- The kids knock out guards to escape. Drugs/Alcohol: none

Normally I simply read the first book of these middle grade adventure/mystery series so I can recommend them to students...but this one was so good that I'm probably going to have to add the next book to my giant TBR list. The pacing of this was perfect, and I found myself easily lost in the story. The multiple-narrator format is well-done and the characters are easily distinguishable from one another. And the reason the kids are being kept in their town? SO original and intriguing. I knew that not everything would be wrapped up in the end, and it's not--but it's a pretty satisfying ending that leaves you more than ready for the next book in the series.

This book is classic Gordon Korman! It is an adventure story with a plot twist you would never imagine. If you have not read this yet, I highly encourage you to move it up on your list. Brilliant...just brilliant!

I can't believe I missed reading this one until now! This is a fantastic book full of interesting characters, along with action and suspense. The audio version contains different voices for various characters and provides a great listening experience.