3.5 stars, and that mostly because this is a YA/NA book (which isn't normally my target reading).

A group of kids are starting their first year at university, trying to fit in, adjusting to being away from home, reinventing themselves into who they will become. For some, it is easier than for others. Caitlin shares a hall with three other girls, one of which is horribly homesick and struggling to fit in. Lonely, homesick girls make the easiest targets, and before she has a chance to go home, she dies of an apparent suicide.

Steven is handsome and confident, and he and Caitlin share an instant bond. When Caitlin returns home to sort out her hall-mate's death, another woman targets Steven, leaving him confused and with an odd bruise on his neck.

Caitlin returns to university to pick up where she left off with Steven and the two rapidly become a couple, until one night when she is kidnapped to lure Steven out - and then he is kidnapped and all memory of him and his existence is expunged.

What is Steven? And what are all the people claiming to be a superior race who are secreted away inside a volcano deep in the Amazonian jungle?

The story was interesting. The author creates a hidden society, a modern-day Utopia, and yet humanity almost always chooses freedom over confined quarters, no matter how perfect the living conditions. I think the author has done an excellent job showing the differing personalities and societal cliques. She's done a nice job of ending the first book in the trilogy, teasing you into the next book without leaving you wanting for answers to the theme in the first book. Worth the read.