Spoiler alert: don't read this review if you haven't already read
Masterminds by Gordon Korman. These two books complete the Masterminds trilogy, which is based on a brilliant premise for a middle school story. Our four young protagonists are part of a scientific experiment in which they were cloned from notorious criminals and then raised in a utopian society with the hope of proving that nurture would make them good people. The kids discovered this truth in book one and made a dramatic escape. In these two books, Malik, Amber, Eli, and Tori are on the run from the Osiris Project whose police force is after them, and they are desperately trying to figure out how they can live their lives with no parents, no birth certificates, no money, and little knowledge of the outside world. They drive cars, plot prison breaks, hijack planes, and hack into computer systems, in some ways using the criminal skills of the criminals whose DNA they share. These books are action-packed and wildly unrealistic, but middle school readers devour them and beg for more. Gordon Korman knows how to write for tweens and teens and this series is hugely appealing to a wide variety of kids. My one complaint about this series is that one of the female character's identifying trait is to be constantly counting calories and worrying about her weight. No male character would ever be saddled with this baggage. I hate to see body shaming and weight-obsession as as even a minor theme in a book where girls other wise are wildly adventurous and competent.
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