Review--Uninvited by Sophie Jordan

YOU CAN'T CHANGE YOUR DNA...EVEN WHEN IT SAYS YOU'RE A MURDERER.

When Davy test positive for Homicidal Tendency Syndrome, aka "the kill gene," she loses everything. Once the perfect high school senior, she is uninvited from her prep school and abandoned by her friends and boyfriend. Even her parents are now afraid of her--although she's never hurt a fly. Davy doesn't feel any different, but genes don't lie. One day she will kill someone.

Without any say in the matter, Davy is thrown into a special class for HTS carriers. She has no doubt the predictions are right about them, especially Sean, who already bears the "H" tattoo as proof of his violence. Yet when the world turns on the carriers, Sean is the only one she can trust. Maybe he's not as dangerous as he seems.

Or maybe Davy is just as deadly.

And so we enter the world of Sophie Jordan's Uninvited. A far cry more different than her Firelight world. It's the year 2021 and the HTS testing is already in effect. Davy is your typical teen prodigy--note the prodigy--and has everything going for her. She's extremely talented in music, she's got good grades, attends a prestigious high school, is already accepted for Julliard, and has the best boyfriend ever coupled with great friends.

Then in Chapter 1, all that changes. Davy learns that she test positive for HTS when the school enforced the students to be tested for it earlier that year. Now why it took so long to get the results or how long it's even been is never mentioned. Regardless in one moment, everything changes for Davy. She is immediately "uninvited" from her high school, they don't use the word "expulsion". Her college immediately withdraws her acceptance and pretty much everything changes for Davy. She has the kill gene. Automatically society at large believes she will kill one day because of this gene.

And so begins the debate of nature vs nurture. Davy has lived all her life, believing herself to be a normal person, albeit musically talented normal person. She's never lost her temper or hurt anyone. But no one seems to care about that. She's pretty much fits the "princess" nickname Sean gives her the first time they meet. The idea of her being capable of being a killer is ludicrous.

I was actually shocked by how horrible Davy was treated once everyone learned that she has the kill gene. Her best friend immediately hates her after she learns. She thinks Davy should be locked up somewhere for the good of the world. Heck, she probably be okay if someone else killed Davy. She was just that cruel! And her boyfriend was no better. Try as he might to accept Davy as Davy, and not a HTS carrier, his true colors eventually shone. I was actually surprised when her brother, Mitchell, the problem child of the family, was the most understanding and considerate one of the family. Of everyone really. He was there for Davy and tried to keep things positive. He even suggested that he and Davy run away when the US calls for all HTS carriers to be put into concentration camps.

I was rather surprised by the pacing. For some reason, everyone seemed to have me thinking the first half of the book was a more normal life for Davy. In fact, Davy's life changed in Chapter 1. We have but a moment of Davy in her normal life before everything changes. She continues to cling to it while she can, but eventually lets go. 

Davy is surprised by some of the other carriers she meets. In her new class room, which is more like in-school-suspension, the carriers she meets are almost normal like her. One or two anyway, the rest she can totally see being killers one day. Then there's Sean of course. He's the mysterious boy who already bears the H tattoo on his neck. So he's hurt someone already. He watches out for her time and time again, and at one point seems put out that he's doing such. He tells her, he can't always be there to protect her and yet he is. And it becomes obvious when a love connection develops. And it wasn't too bad as far as romance goes. At least it took time to build!

My review is getting longer than I intended here, so much to talk about with this one! The second half of the book shows Davy, Sean and their friend Gil going into a special training program with other carriers who will be trained to basically be assassins for the US government. They all have potential. And yet, it is still a dog-eat-dog kind of world in this camp.

Overall Uninvited was a pretty good read! It was intriguing seeing how "normal" people treated the HTS carriers. Granted, some of the HTS carriers were a bad sort. But you could see that some of them might have just decided to be what society expected of them. So why not give it to them?  I didn't have too many issues with this one. Although one thing that nagged at me, knowing it's set in the future, was that Davy had no idea who actor Brad Pitt was, but knew the Beatles and their songs by heart. Go figure. Guess it was a music-related thing.

Davy is the kind of character that grew on you. There were times when she bugged me, being a little too "princess" like, but she started to grow on me as time moved on. She found a strength inside herself and did what she could to survive. She had help and that was good. She definitely surprised me in the end. Definitely look forward to seeing how things wrapup in the end. Wondering if other characters might reappear in Davy's life. Purely speculation of course, there were no hints at anything. Just that Davy and her friends have a plan and they intend to make it work. Yay for no cliffhangers!


Overall Rating 4/5 stars