Lockdown by Alexander Gordon Smith

Alex Sawyer isn’t really a bad kid. Well, sure, he’s been living a life of petty crime, but he was definitely framed for the murder of his best friend that lands him a life sentence in Furnace Penitentiary. Alex has little time to dwell on this injustice, though, as he is introduced to his new permanent home and personal hell. Furnace is a prison like no other, where gangs of inmates are a regular threat and other unspeakable creatures menace the night. And worst of all: escape is impossible. Or is it? Alex may be “new fish,” but he refuses to let stories and rumors crush his will. There’s got to be a way out of this play, and Alex is willing to risk everything, even fates worse than death, to find it.

Lockdown is one heck of an action packed book, with new thrills and horrors jumping out at the reader with every turn of the page. I was actually reluctant to start this book, thinking it would be too violent and too similar to The Maze Runner by James Dashner. I was correct that Lockdown and The Maze Runner share non-stop action and incredibly determined protagonists, but the constant state of danger turned out to be more addictive than frightening. Despite the fact that I just knew that things would not end well, I could not stop myself from reading on after each setback to Alex’s master plan of escape. It’s not just the plot that is wonderfully done; Smith manages to develop the characters and their relationships surprisingly well for such a plot based novel. I felt I got to know Alex and his friends Zee and Donovan very well, which just made each plot twist more jarring and tragic. There were definitely a couple of details about the story that continued to nag at me, such as why an institution that violates human rights as severely as Furnace would be allowed to exist in the modern world and where all the females were. Despite this, though, Lockdown is without a doubt an exciting and fast paced novel that most readers will find impossible to set down.

Lockdown will be enjoyed by fans of The Maze Runner by James Dashner, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, and Cherry Heaven by L.J. Adlington.

Rating: 4.25

Review copies from AuthorsOnTheWeb and Amazon Vine