School for Psychics by
K.C. Archer
My rating:
4 of 5 stars
[Disclaimer: I received a free e-copy of this book from NetGalley for review purposes.]
This came up on my dashboard on NetGalley, but when I read the synopsis I didn't think I was very interested. There are so many books on my TBR pile this year, I didn't want to waste time on something that didn't sound interesting to me. But then someone I follow, who usually has similar taste in books to me, praised it in a review, and made it sound so much better than the blurb. So I requested it, and I was approved. But I put off reading it because of other books I wanted to read, so this review is a little delayed. My apologies to NG and the author for that.
Anyway, you'll notice that a book I wasn't interested garnered four stars from me. They are pretty enthusiastic stars, too. It wasn't perfect (far from it), but I absolutely loved the character progression and how you are always led in certain ways, but may end up in a different place than expected.
So there was some obvious foreshadowing. A few different characters come under suspicion, and you aren't sure which one(s) to believe or disbelieve, but I think I figured out the "big bad" early on in the book. I wasn't 100% sure, but my suspicions were confirmed at the end.
But it's not really a "big bad" in the sense that the characters have to destroy this thing to save the world. So in that it's much more sinister. What are their true motives? By the end we know approximately who they are, but not what they are, and not really much else about them.
Regarding characterization, I absolutely HATED Teddy when I first met her. She was selfish, seemed to have a sense of guilt but still threw her life away anyway, and didn't seem to want to improve her situation at all. She went to Whitfield very reluctantly, and only because she had just lost a shit-ton of money at poker and her bookie was going to come to collect very soon. When she got there, she distanced herself from everyone, refused to let anyone in, and kept making selfish mistake after selfish mistake. I wanted to slap her in the head and ask her what the heck she was doing, because I know her trajectory is all too realistic and it is frustrating. She was *real* to me. Even when she's still screwing up at the end, she's still struggling with everything she has done. There is development there, progress, and a shift in perspective for her.
So by the end, I had grown to love Teddy and all of her flaws, despite all her mistakes, or maybe because of them.
Also, I just need to talk about Jillian for a second. Does anyone watch The Good Place? The entire book, all I could picture whenever Jillian was speaking or mentioned was Tahani. For reference:
I think my one major complaint about this book, hence only 4 stars, is that all the characters acted and spoke like teenagers, not people in their mid-20s. I also couldn't get a read on how old Nick was, which confused me a little later on in the book. So I had a hard time not reading these kids as high-schoolers in a military setting, which has obviously been done before, but it didn't read right for me. Also, there seemed to be some jumping around in time that wasn't clearly noted, so I would be reading something about the characters being one place, and then shortly after they were somewhere else with no indication that they had moved. That may have been the ARC, or it may have been that I was missing the written shift for some reason, or it may have just been that way.
Overall, a great book and satisfying read. I'm glad I read that review, I'm glad I requested it, and I'm glad I read it. Psychics are hard to do well. I think K.C. Archer did a good job, and I look forward to reading book 2 when it comes out.
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The Memory of Fire by Callie Bates
