I've come to a decision. Any genre that spikes an excess of that type of book should not be trusted. 
 In that genre, you should go for the books that were published before the phase really took off. 
 Variant is one of the newer books that was written in the Aftertime. (Before I wrote that, I wrote Afterlight and that made me bounce in my seat and giggle. Neal Shusterman, you may take that as a compliment of the highest form.) 
 Where was I? 
 Oh, right, Variant. Honestly, I'm still not sure what the point of this book was. From what I could see, the antagonists didn't have much of a reason for what they were doing. Somethin' about androids. One could argue that it will all become clear in the next book. Judging by the slowness of the beginning and the huge lack of closure at the end, I'm not too sure about that. I wouldn't put it past Wells to drag things out for the second book, make things more confusing, and then dump a huge cliff-hanger at the end. Just like he did with this one. 
 The ending was probably the most annoying aspect of the book, but the stupidity of everyone is a close second. 
 The whole time, I was thinking what Benson was. "Come on you stupid heads! If we all ran for it, we could escape." Course, this was before a bunch of them turned out to be robots, but still... they could have done something. The whole thing never needed to have happened. 
 The twist in the end was decent, but left me frustrated. Not because it was bad, but because it made me sad, and a lot of my favourite characters... well, they weren't my favourite characters anymore. 
 I'll probably still read the next one, just cause I have a hunch that Lily might have survived and I really liked her. That would be a very redeeming act of kindness.