Victor Vale and Eli Cardale are jaded college seniors who're best friends, roommates, close confidants and ten times smarter than everyone they know and about to turn in their final theses. 
 What started off as a unique idea for Eli's thesis becomes an obsession on both the friend's part. 
 "Hell, we could be heroes." 
 "We could be dead." 
 "That's a risk everyone takes by living." 
 The desire to stand out, be something more, fueled by years of mistreatment and ridicule finally turns the two friends into what they've always desired to be: ExtraOrdinary. 
 But things start unraveling and they soon learn that everything comes with a price. And it's a price not everyone is willing to pay. Except they are. 
 "He wanted to care, he wanted to care so badly, but there was this gap between what he felt and what he wanted to feel, a space where something important had been carved out." 
 Thrown on opposite sides of a prison cell, one of them buries his resentments for ten years while the other goes on a killing spree spanning hundreds of ExtraOrdinaries, convinced that they go against the work of God and he is honour-bound to wipe them all out. 
 While neither friend is a saint, the lines of hero and villain are blurred when they engage in a battle of wills, accompanied by two ExtraOrdinary sisters; one of them doomed to death by the other. 
 Unique idea, wonderful execution, great writing. This was my first Schwab book but I can now say with the utmost confidence that it won't be my last.