Uninvited

Good story to it. I can almost guarantee that the gene isn't real, and Dr. Wainwright is just trying to take over the government. I guess we will see in future books.

Davy - our heroine - is such a massive Mary Sue, but the story and setting was very cool. As a biomedical scientist, the genetics part of the book intrigued me and I could totally see this scenario happening in the future, if not as severe as in this book. The fact that Davy thinks she's better than everyone else annoyed me so much and that is why I give this book 3 stars instead of 4.

Slightly rough beginning, but more than made up for by the heroine being heroic.

Uninvited by Sophie Jordan was a very interesting book to read. It is about the government looking for people that have the “kill gene” and marking them as a carrier. This causes the humans with this gene to be an outcast to society and everyone treats them as killers even if they haven't done anything.

The main character, Davy, is a very talented young teenager from Texas. She goes to school, has a boyfriend who loves her, and is very talented when it comes to performing musically. Every so often, the students are tested for the kill gene. It turns out that Davy has the kill gene and cannot run away from her so called fate.

Once everyone finds out about Davy, her social circle goes against her. Her boyfriend becomes a jerk and just uses her at the end to try and have sex with her. Her best friend turned against her and calls her dangerous every chance she gets. It was very sad to see this happen to her because she seemed like such a nice person and she never caused harm to anyone in the past. So why was everyone so willing to turn against her? Because of this so called gene that she has.

I really wish we were giving the background behind the actual gene. There were some little side stories as you read along before each chapter but they never went into too much detail. Why did they look for this gene? How do they know specifically that it is a kill gene? Is it just a hoax like Davy's brother seems it to be? Making people seem as if they are something to be afraid of causes them to act out. They feel like they were given this opportunity to do something because they feel like they are dangerous. This causes a few teens to go out there and kill hundreds of people.

Davy has to transfer to a new school since she was “uninvited” from her old one. She is forced into a room with a few other students that have this kill gene. They do not learn much but are put in the room like a cage. This is where she meets a few friends like Gil and Sean.

[ WARNING MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS ]

Davy starts to become sort of friends with Sean. They have this sexual tension between them every time he needs to save her or look out for her. Davy ended up going to a party with her boyfriend and broke up with him once she found out he just wanted to have sex with her. That she should be happy someone still wants her in her “state”. This causes her to become up set and slap him. Then she calls Sean to come pick her up because it is almost curfew and she could get imprinted for that.

Davy's former best friend, Tori, goes to the government to tell them that Davy hurt her boyfriend and she is dangerous to society. Which I thought was silly, so what that she slapped him? Does no one else get upset and slap people? It wasn't like she killed him. But this caused Davy to be imprinted. This scene was really sad and it made me feel like Davy was being somewhat raped/stricken of her innocence. She was taken away from her home without her parents permission to be branded for life.

As time goes on, the kill gene people were taken into detention camps and also training camps. Only the most promising people would be chosen for the training camp. Davy, Gil, and Sean were picked from the people we knew about. The training camp was used so they were useful to the society and would fight for their government. They needed to learn how to “control” their anger and need to kill. Everyone that was scary got like that because the government treated them like they were killers already. It caused more trouble in my opinion than helping the world.

A traumatic scene is when one of the trainers practically forces Davy to chose between Sean being killed and killing a teenager that has acted out. She ended up killing the teenager boy before the guy got a chance to kill Sean. It was a sad scene because she has now killed. She has become what they wanted of her.

Sean and Gil have been planning to break out of the camp and they plan on taking Davy with them. This went by really quickly in the book. A couple chapters before Sean is telling this to Davy then a few later they are gone. I thought it would be sketchy and that the person Gil found to help them escape would turn against them and get them in more trouble. Davy decides to take her friend, Sabine, with them. They all escape and that is pretty much how the first book ends.

Overall, this was a good book. Most likely a 3.5-4/5 stars. It was a very quick read. I read it in about 2.5 or 3 hours. I read it in one sitting before I went to bed. Its was good and I want to read about Sean and Davy in the next book.

Uninvited skyrocketed up my to-be-read list when I first heard about it. Not only am I fan of Sophie Jordan's writing style, but the whole idea of HTS sounded eerily plausible. I love getting lost in a book with a premise that could actually happen. It adds that extra level of tension to the whole read. What I'm really rambling about is this: I had high expectations. I went into this book intending to love it from cover to cover. It just didn't exactly happen that way.

First off, the story is told from Davy's perspective. This isn't an issue for the most part. Davy's story, what with her life being completely turned upside down by HTS, is actually rather interesting. I was right there with her as she tried to cope time and time again, as more insanity fell onto her head. The problem is that the reader isn't really treated to anything beyond what Davy knows. No description of where the gene was discovered, how it's tested for, or even how it was truly affecting people outside of her hometown. There are snippets here and there that try to make up for this. Newspaper clippings, letters, etc. However I still felt like I was missing some very useful information.

The other problem I had was with the romance. I'm sure we all know that the majority of YA has romance in it. I don't mind that, trust me. I love seeing two people come together under circumstances that would normally break them if they were apart. Still, neither of the two boys who came into Davy's world felt realistic to me. They felt like paper dolls. Boy A with his sweet personality who is, underneath it all, not the boy he seems to. Boy B the exact opposite, someone who looks dangerous and has a warm center. I honestly didn't like either of them. I also couldn't get behind Davy's paranoia at what a guy that she just met thought of her. It was a bit much.

One thing I will say is that Davy was a strong character when it counts, which I appreciated. The second half of the novel gave me a much better appreciation for how tough she truly was. I just wanted a bit more. More explanations, more action, just more of it all. So, yes I'll be back to read whatever comes after Uninvited. The ending left a lot undone, and my book-addled brain won't let that go.