@propranksterpropaganda you said in one of your posts (can’t remember which one) that you haven’t read any of Gordon Korman’s books besides the Hypnotists series. If you want to sample his extensive back catalog, I recommend that you start with Masterminds, which is also the first in a trilogy. ( @venusdear hopefully you’ll agree?)
The premise: Five kids have been raised in a tiny New Mexico town where everyone’s lives are as conflict-free as possible. They’ve never heard of things like murder; they can’t access accurate information about famous events in American history; and things like lying and disobeying are absolutely taboo. Slowly, the main characters realize that the adults in their lives are both surveilling and deceiving them, and their community is a front for a massive experiment.
Why I think you’ll like it: Masterminds is also about young people being manipulated by adults whom they should be able to trust, which forces them to abandon everything they ever knew and figure out how much they’ll have to stretch their own principles in order to survive. Instead of one protagonist, there’s a true ensemble of very different personalities, which leads to some very fun interactions. And while mind control isn’t quite as central to the plot and world-building as The Hypnotists, it does play a part, especially in the first book.
