Book where students are trapped in a secluded school, controlled by cameras and robots

Question

The book is about a boy who goes to a secluded school. When he arrives the kids try and warn him not to come inside. He doesn't listen and once he's there he can't leave. The students live in the school and there are cameras everywhere, and lessons are taught by recording.

They follow the instructions of a robot voice on the intercom and put on things like dances on their own, and disappear if they try and escape. They later find out some of the students are robots, and that's all I really remember. I think it's from the perspective of the boy, and I read it maybe 5 years ago.

Answer 1

Likely Variant by Robison Wells. Published in 2011, which fits you having read it about 5 years ago.

From Goodreads:

Benson Fisher thought that a scholarship to Maxfield Academy would be the ticket out of his dead-end life.

He was wrong.

Now he’s trapped in a school that’s surrounded by a razor-wire fence. A school where video cameras monitor his every move. Where there are no adults. Where the kids have split into groups in order to survive.

Where breaking the rules equals death.

But when Benson stumbles upon the school’s real secret, he realizes that playing by the rules could spell a fate worse than death, and that escape—his only real hope for survival—may be impossible.

And from Wikipedia:

Some few hours later that night, Benson wakes up and tries to wake Jane. Jane twitches, and afterward systematically walks to a door on the wall around the school. The door leads to a basement, with computers and labs. She walks to a computer, pulls off her ear and plugs a cable from the computer into her head. From this Benson learns that Jane, and possibly others, are not human, but androids. With no adults obviously present, it is everyone for themselves. The students are supervised by unknown people, communicating by videos and messages, but never in person.

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Found with the Google query science fiction book school prison robots site:goodreads.com/book.

Answer 2

Variant by Robison Wells

Benson Fisher thought that a scholarship to Maxfield Academy would be the ticket out of his dead-end life.

He was wrong.

Now he’s trapped in a school that’s surrounded by a razor-wire fence. A school where video cameras monitor his every move. Where there are no adults. Where the kids have split into groups in order to survive.

Where breaking the rules equals death.

But when Benson stumbles upon the school’s real secret, he realizes that playing by the rules could spell a fate worse than death, and that escape—his only real hope for survival—may be impossible.

Found with a search for novel "boarding school" robots