Uninvited by Sophie Jordan

Uninvited by Sophie Jordan

2014, HarperTeen

Series: Book 1 of Uninvited

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Rating

Synopsis: When Davy Hamilton's tests come back positive for Homicidal Tendency Syndrome (HTS)-aka the kill gene-she loses everything. Her boyfriend ditches her, her parents are scared of her, and she can forget about her bright future at Juilliard. Davy doesn't feel any different, but genes don't lie. One day she will kill someone.

Only Sean, a fellow HTS carrier, can relate to her new life. Davy wants to trust him; maybe he's not as dangerous as he seems. Or maybe Davy is just as deadly.

The Good: Uninvited's premise is phenomenal. It's execution lived up to its potential, which is a rare and wonderful thing. This book is scary in its realistic plot progression. If HTS was a thing and the government could test for it, I see things playing out just as Jordan wrote. What I wouldn't have envisioned was what would happen to a girl like Davy. How would a girl like that survive in that type of world? Jordan has created a captivating character and placed her in a unthinkable situation. The results are nothing short of spectacular.

The Bad: There is an entire cast pf HTS positive characters and we only really get to know Davy more than superficially. We see a little more of Sean and Gil, but the rest are nothing more than one-dimensional placeholders. Each is a type and each stays true to it. While this makes Davy and the 2 boys stand out more and makes the reader care about them well beyond the others, it seems like a wasted opportunity to highlight the different types of struggles these people would have in the world.