To Best The Boys by Mary Weber
Published by Thomas Nelson on March 2019Genres: Young Adult
Format: eBook
Source: Publisher
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Every year for the past fifty-four years, the residents of Pinsbury Port receive a mysterious letter inviting all eligible-aged boys to compete for an esteemed scholarship to the all-male Stemwick University. Every year, the poorer residents look to see that their names are on the list. The wealthier look to see how likely their sons are to survive. And Rhen Tellur opens it to see if she can derive which substances the ink and parchment are created from, using her father’s microscope.
In the province of Caldon, where women are trained in wifely duties and men are encouraged into collegiate education, sixteen-year-old Rhen Tellur wants nothing more than to become a scientist. As the poor of her seaside town fall prey to a deadly disease, she and her father work desperately to find a cure. But when her Mum succumbs to it as well? Rhen decides to take the future into her own hands—through the annual all-male scholarship competition.
With her cousin, Seleni, by her side, the girls don disguises and enter Mr. Holm’s labyrinth, to best the boys and claim the scholarship prize. Except not everyone’s ready for a girl who doesn’t know her place. And not everyone survives the maze.
A girl, a maze and some magic.
The synopsis focuses on the maze but really, there is much more to the book than that. Less Divergent, more Frankenstein. While there is action and danger in the maze, the contest doesn’t start until about half way through the book. Which is not a bad thing.
The beginning of the book is filled with great character development and world building. I really liked Rhen and her awkwardness. She has a curious brain, interested in science and lab testing and above all, trying to cure this mysterious disease that is plaguing their city. Miraculously, it stays away from the rich.
The events leading up to the maze entry felt real and natural as Rhen’s time is running out and she has to do something drastic (cut her hair and pose as a boy) if she has any hope in curing the disease. I love the personal motivation for Rhen. There is a love interest but it’s not overpowering and Lute is the strong and quiet type which really make sense given that Rhen is socially awkward and likes to experiment with dead bodies.
When they finally get into the maze, the creativity of the clues and challenges really took me away. I loved each one and honestly, I wasn’t sure who was going to survive and who wasn’t.
But the end felt rushed for me. All this time, Rhen has been struggling with upper class men. They wouldn’t believe her when she kept telling them the disease was spreading, mutating, growing. And yet, at the end of the book when all is revealed, they seem to have no problem believing her story. Not to mention she has little to no evidence to support her claims on the origin of the disease. I was a little frustrated by this because there was such solid motivation through the whole story, this part felt flat and too too easy.
Overall, read this book. It’s got everything you want. I blew through it in a short amount of time, only to be sad it was over.
Kimberly majored in Songwriting and currently works full time in the music industry. When she's not listening to music, knitting or writing, you can find her outside reading her favorite genres: Young Adult, Adult Fiction, Mystery, and Romance.
