I received this copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review Ella, Max, Fallon, Corey and Zane were incredibly close as children, but following the death of Max’s big sister, they grew apart – only Max and Ella remain together. For each, the post-Jessica era has its own devastating troubles to come to terms with. The development of teenagers is expertly done, and eventually each finds a place in your heart. Corey develops from a lonely, bullied disabled boy into an admirably capable and confident young man. Fallon changes the least – remaining a reliable and responsible friend. It just takes the others some time to remember this. Meanwhile Zane, Ella and Max seem to increasingly spiral out of control. The story is narrated from Ella’s point of view, in the form of an interview – but the neither interviewer, nor the reason for the interview, is ever identified. The cover and the publisher’s blurb indicate that this is a book about revenge, but for me revenge was a minor part. This is a book of secrets – a character’s own and those that they hold out of loyalty for others. In each case, keeping those secrets has the opposite effect to that intended: the person to be protected turns out to be the one most damaged. One by one the secrets are revealed, and the repercussions for some are catastrophic. There are subtle hints throughout the book as to what has happened, and as a result not too many big surprises – until the end. You always hope that your suspicions were unfounded, and there is plenty to keep you very interested as to the possible outcomes. The book finishes with a humdinger of a twist that I doubt anyone would have guessed. As you get further and further into the book, the more compulsive it becomes. Any thoughts of sleep go out the window – you just have to read through to the last page. You don’t find out who are labelled deviants are until right near the end of the story – and a more unjustly, misnamed group of people is difficult to imagine. The ending is not what you would want, but there is enough justice done that the remaining characters have some hope of a happy future.

It’s been a few hours since I’ve closed The Deviants and one of the only thoughts running through my head is WHAT IN THE WORLD DID I JUST READ? I am so confused at this very minute and the only way to make SENSE of this book is to write it all out, so goes: MY THOUGHTS: 1. I went in expecting a murder mystery. The blurb begins with the line “A Dark and Suspenseful story from the author of…” and also, it alluded to the Famous Five, Enid Blyton’s famous series WHO SOLVED MYSTERIES. MYSTERIES. 2. Since I was expecting a grown up version of my five favourite childhood detectives (along with Nancy Drew) the first seventy pages of this book were like a snooze fest for me. There was pretty much nothing going on and I WAS JUST SO BORED. 3. This book should have been marketed as a DARK YA CONTEMPORARY NOVEL. Because that’s what it was. A CONTEMPORARY novel. There was NO Famous Five mystery surrounding the book and the “Famous Five” (Fearless in this book) were just a bunch of ordinary teenagers trying to be adults SO BADLY. Apparently, life was just something that kept throwing bad stuff at you at EIGHTEEN. I’m EIGHTEEN. WHAT LIVES ARE YOU LIVING? 4. While the book didn’t give me what I expected, the story was still good. I wasn’t in a state of suspense, nor was there a mystery BUT THE ACTUAL PLOT OF THE BOOK WAS QUITE GOOD – the description was just misleading. Almost all of the characters had a lot of secrets and there were A LOT of twists but again, they weren’t of the kind I was expecting. 5. I didn’t get the characters. I didn’t understand the character’s whose viewpoint it was told from (Ella) I didn’t get Corey or Max or Corey or Fallon. They were all teenagers trying SO DESPERATELY to be more mature than they were. Also, THERE WAS NO PARENTAL SUPERVISION IN THIS BOOK. Oh, Fallon wants to have a baby when she’s a high school dropout? WHY NOT? Corey wants to be a substitute father and drop out or work and not go to uni? DON’T THINK TWICE ABOUT IT. It felt really unlikely that things like this would happen in the real world. 6. It always takes me a while to get used to British slang but I liked the way is gave a little bit of authenticity to this book. Honestly, not the best book I read because what I expected and what I got were TOTALLY different things. If someone had told me this was a dark YA CONTEMPORARY, I probably would’ve liked it a WHOLE lot better. 3 stars.