secrets and betrayal in "the compound"

Right now I am reading The Compound by S. A Bodeen. This book is fairly interesting, the plot is creative. It’s not the most well written book, but it’s one of those enjoyable books you can read in two days. In the book, there is a millionaire who has his whole life planned out. He even has his own “compound” built in case there is a nuclear explosion. The compound has enough supplies to last 15 years, until it’s safe to emerge because the radiation levels are down. On one terrifying day, the family is forced into this compound because of a nuclear explosion. The compound is enormous and each child’s room has an exact replicate of every object that they had in their old room. Only one of the family members did not make it. After 6 years of living there, Eli, the main character begins to unravel shocking secrets about his father.

The two major themes in this book are secrecy and betrayal. Eli’s own father is betraying him and the whole family. The father is a very mysterious character. He is illusive and secretive; he lies to his family, in an effort to mask some kind of extremely evil plan (which I don’t know yet because I haven’t finished reading). The father comes across as a bit crazy, he spends many sleepless nights working in a lab, he wants to clone his children, and he had his whole life planned out in great detail, now this one makes me a little suspicious. How could you plan to build an enormous compound? How would you know to fill it with all the supplies you will need for 15 years? It’s almost as if he wanted to go into the compound, but why?

And also, another big theme is regret. Eli’s father told him that his twin brother, Eddy is dead. Eddy did not make it inside the compound during the nuclear explosion. Eli misses his brother, he blames himself for his death. But when he figures out that his father is hiding something from the family, he has hope. He has hope that someday he will make it out of the compound.