Uninvited by Sophie Jordan

Pages: 384

Genre: Dystopian/Sci-fi

Series: Uninvited #1

Publisher: Harper Teen

Release Date: Jan 28, 2014

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.

I loved the Firelight trilogy, so hearing about Sophie Jordan's new series, and about serial killers with a sci-fi twist? Oh my gosh, yes! And it didn't disappoint.

The thing Uninvited, I think, is that if you'd replaced the HTS with something like LGBT or color, and taken away the dystopian bits, Uninvited would've been a completely real contemporary. The way that Jordan writes the prejudice in the story is heartbreaking and feels real. It's "punish and ask questions later" and it just got to me, how they treated those with HTS genes with fear and suspicion and hate--sound familiar?

Either way, I loved seeing Davy grow as a character. In the beginning, she's sheltered, protected, and it doesn't feel like a dystopian story at all--until Davy is told she has the HTS gene. That's when things slowly start to spiral down for her (but up for us, because the story just turned even more amazing.) She's not a decidedly strong character in the typical sense, but she had a strong will and she wasn't one of those characters that just automatically learned to be the best. She was...well, not relatable, but she was a character I could sympathize and love with all her flaws.

Obviously, a book like Uninvited is going to be action packed, and it, while it wasn't all fights and rebellion, was just as captivating. I was absolutely caught up in Davy's story as she became accustomed to HTS life and how things were at her...reformation camp? Uninvited was filled with twists and fighting, though I do wish Davy herself had beaten someone in a fistfight. The story is thrilling and completely enraptured me from start to finish--which made me anxious for the sequel. Seriously--need.

Romance is a background element in the story, but I absolutely adored it. Sean seems, at first, like the brooding bad boy in the story, and maybe he was, but I loved him nevertheless. Their relationship, at first, seems a bit insta-lovey (or insta-likey?) since Sean seems to take just a sudden liking to Davy and, while that irritated me at first, it grew on me as Sean and Davy stayed friends through most of the story. Although, c'mon, there's always some romance, and by the end, they did kiss (and thank God! I was getting tired of mentally pushing their faces together, no matter how much I liked their platonic relationship.)

As for the sci-fi aspect, it was pretty light, and I do wish that they'd talked more about how the kill gene was discovered, how they find it in genes, etc, but it didn't really bother me when I was reading and didn't take away from the fun of the book!

Uninvited is an amazing read that I'll definitely recommend, especially to people who are looking for a book light on dystopian and sci-fi or any fans of Firelight (though Uninvited, in my opinion, is a much better read, if not just as heart pounding!)

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