Review: The Treatment by CL Taylor

“You have to help me. We’re not being reformed. We’re being brainwashed.”

All sixteen year old Drew Finch wants is to be left alone. She's not interested in spending time with her mum and stepdad and when her disruptive fifteen year old brother Mason is expelled from school for the third time and sent to a residential reform academy she's almost relieved.

Everything changes when she's followed home from school by the mysterious Dr Cobey, who claims to have a message from Mason. There is something sinister about the ‘treatment’ he is undergoing. The school is changing people.

Determined to help her brother, Drew must infiltrate the Academy and unearth its deepest, darkest secrets.

Before it’s too late.

Review: wow, this is going to be a hard book to review without giving away any spoilers because it is just so twisty and action packed with full of exciting characters and plot. I really enjoyed this book and it was a very different read for me! This is CL Taylor's first YA novel. I love her usual thrillers and this one had just as much action and set my pulse racing just as much as her adult novels do. This book has a slightly dystopian feel about it and is set in the near future. Don't let the dystopian feel put you off though, I could recognise everything in this book and it made for some familiar feeling and ` familiar setting but with CL Taylor's plot twists and a very uncomfortable reality. 

This book follows Drew and her quest to help her brother. Drew is a fabulously strong female lead. She fights for what she believes in and finds some incredibly clever ways to get her own way and to get exactly what she wants. She doesn't make friends in real life easily because she values her independence so much and i found this really relatable and also very admirable. Her bother Mason is a character in this novel but we don't get to know as much of his back story as we do Drew's therefore I didn't feel as much of a connection to him or the other characters in the novel as much as my connection with her. 

The adults in this book are definitely not to be trusted and that's what makes the kind of classic YA characteristics in this novel. I love the fact that we can solve to hate the authority figures here, especially since this is mainly set in a school so we can all hate the OFSTED inspector! Some of the plot lines of this book are definitely not for the faint hearted just because we don't know exactly what The Treatment is but we know its not a nice thing! And because we love to hate the authority, some may find the reasons why we hate them fairly shocking. But I loved all the dark and twisted bits of this book, they made for excellent reading and kept me on the edge of my seat right until the bitter end!

If you love CL Taylor's psychological thrillers already then you will definitely enjoy this read. If this is your first of her books then you are in for a treat! I would definitely recommend this book for older readers and you should definitely prepare yourself to be challenged, to be entertained and to be thrilled by this awesome novel!

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