The Gardener Review

Synopsis: Mason has never known his father, but longs to. All he has of him is a DVD of a man whose face is never seen, reading a children's book. One day, on a whim, he plays the DVD for a group of comatose teens at the nursing home where his mother works. One of them, a beautiful girl, responds. She is part of a horrible experiment intended to render teenagers into genetically engineered, self-sustaining life-forms who don't need food or water to survive. And before he knows it, Mason is on the run with the girl, and wanted, dead or alive, by the mysterious mastermind of this evil plan, who is simply called the Gardener.

My Thoughts: I figured I'd like this, but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I knew what it was about from the book summary but I didn't know why the bad people were "growing" children. When I found out why, it was amazing that the reasons behind the experiments were something I'd been discussing in my science class (Too bad I wasn't still in school when I got my copy of the book).

I appreciated that this book talked about a realistic problem, one that becomes a bigger problem as time goes on. Because the problem was real, it made the story more entertaining and scary. Not scary like haunting, but scary like -- wow, something similar to this could actually happen. Some scientist would probably be willing to experiment on people for the "greater good". The combination of the story and appealing characters made this a nice story. I did wish that I knew more about the character though. They sounded likable, but the story was so fast paced that it was hard to get to know them. Hopefully I'll get to know them better if there is another book, even though this was a good standalone .