The Variance

Jennifer Rees, former Senior Editor at Scholastic, described it as: “Gripping, fresh, and unlike anything I’ve read recently.”

For nearly a century, the world has belonged to women alone.

To the women of Ka’Mel, seventeen-year-old Spaide is a relic—a dangerous reminder of what women once were. Small. Emotional. Feminine. She’s spent her life learning which parts of herself to hide, without ever asking why.

But when a deadly plot forces Spaide to run for her life, she must journey aboveground on a desperate mission to find an ally among people she never knew existed. The farther she ventures from Ka’Mel, the more everything she thought she understood begins to unravel. Then she discovers the impossible:

A boy who should not exist.

Little by little, everything she believes begins to fracture. Having never known touch, desire, or love, she has no name for what he awakens in her. What begins as a fight for survival unravels into something far bigger, exposing a world built on secrets and placing Spaide at its center—where the closer she grows to him, the greater the risk becomes, and one misstep could get them both killed.

Discover the first novel in this addictive YA dystopian romance trilogy, packed with high-stakes survival, buried secrets, and irresistible romantic tension.