The Maze Runner by James Dashner

This book is the first in a series, and I gave it a rating of four out of five. Thomas emerges from an elevator box and discovers he's in the middle of a camp full of boys. He decides it must be some type of prison, but none of the boys can remember anything about their pasts. The place is surrounded by a wall, and that's in the middle of a huge maze made of ivy. The exits to the walls close each night, because Grievers will kill anyone caught outside the walls. The boys have been trying for two years to find a way to escape through the maze, but a couple of strange things happen once Thomas arrives. Thomas becomes the first person to survive a night outside the walls, and the first girl shows up in the box. There's something deep in Thomas's mind about the whole situation, and he senses the other boys will hate him if they find out about his past. Things start changing quickly, and everyone figures out that they will all die very soon if they can't find a way out of the maze.

I enjoyed this book, but there will probably be some readers who do not. The conflict was imaginative, and action was mixed into the plot. It satisfied my interest in mysteries, because I needed to figure out the solution to the maze and how Thomas's past affected the whole problem. Thomas couldn't remember anything about his own life, but other boys said they had memories of him. Things seemed to start falling apart when Thomas and the girl arrived, so they are blamed. Thomas and the reader were left to figure it all out.