3.6 out of 4 stars.

A witness protection (rusty) gated community gone horribly wrong.

“The Blinds” in Texas is not a tourist attraction. It is sweltering hot, deserted, and is surrounded by barbed wire. The only occupants are prisoners that were sentenced to a different kind of jail. These subjects were selected as a science experiment in order to see what would happen if you wiped their memory of all their bad history (most importantly the crime they committed that landed them there) and let them interact with one another. Now please note these people are not blue collar crime committers but instead have all been accused of at least one murder. The biggest question, having no memory of the past, would they still lash out again? There is no internet and they don’t even know their real name before they were plucked and dropped here in Texas so there is a slim chance of ever finding out what they did to get sentenced.

Calvin Cooper, 8 years serving The Blinds as Sheriff, is happy to report that everything seems to be running smoothly. That is up until a suicide and a murder hit back to back (when there is only one weapon on the grounds and it is locked up) starts to create a stir. These incidences lead to outside investigators coming into town and everyone starts to realize they are most likely in more danger than they could of ever known.

I loved the concept of this book, totally interesting. I wanted to know all other fun facts of how everyone co-existed and could read about it for many many pages. However, the only reason this book lost points was it ran a little gory for me. It became very violent and it almost made it too fantasy based instead of a realistic thriller. Unfortunately, if you don’t like violence I would imagine you won’t be able to get behind this book.