Uninvited by Sophie Jordan: Review

Ttitle: Uninvited
Author: Sophie Jordan
Publisher: HarperTeen
Buy This Book: Book Depository / Amazon

The Scarlet Letter meets Minority Report in bestselling author Sophie Jordan's chilling new novel about a teenage girl who is ostracized when her genetic test proves she's destined to become a murderer.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.

It is thanks to Twitter that I finally got around to reading this book, proof that I should use Twitter more often. I was struggling to decide what to read and so I turned to the good people on Twitter, who helped tremendously. Uninvited came out the winner and I am so happy that I did because they didn't let me down, this book was incredible. I thought this review would be so easy to write because I loved the book so much, but it's actually making it harder. I want to do the book justice and write a review that makes you want to go out and buy it or one click it.

Finding out that she has the HTS gene completely changes Davy's life. She's a musical prodigy with a bright future ahead of her and a boyfriend she loves. But that all changes when her test results come back and show she is a HTS carrier, a killer. Now she has to leave behind her friends and boyfriend, not that they want to be around her any more anyway and go to a public school with other carriers, people who could potentially kill her. It's here that she meets Sean, who carries the H tattoo that shows he has been violent once already and proves that he's as dangerous as the government says. He scares Davy but at the same time he fascinates her, especially when he steps in to help her.

I got sucked into this story right from the very beginning. The premise sounded perfect to me and I couldn't wait to read how it all played out and how the HTS aspect worked. I felt for Davy almost instantly as I watched her whole future get taken away from her all because of one test. I felt she was a great female character, even if she seemed a little weak at times and constantly in need of saving. But she has her moments where you see just how strong she really is.

Sean has the quiet, brooding, mysterious act down perfectly. Move over Four because you now have some serious competition. We have another strong male character and he steps in to save our heroine any chance he gets. But I don't feel like that makes Davy seem weak at all but shows how much Sean isn't willing to sit back and watch others get hurt. It was nice to see that he didn't just do it for her but for others too, which showed how much of a nice guy he was. The romance is very slow building; do not worry about any insta-love or love triangles because they are nowhere to be found in this.

I don't want to give away any spoilers because I adored this whole book and want you all to experience that for yourselves. The book has two parts and part two completely blew me away. I couldn't put the book down from then on because I had no clue what would happen next and I HAD to know. Part 2 for me had quite a few elements that really reminded me of Divergent. There's a training scene where Davy is pitted against some big strong guy that is clearly going to beat the crap out of her. And a few other things I don't want to mention because of spoilers.

I honestly had only two faults with the whole book and one only came to me as I was writing the review. My first issue was that Davy sings Hurt and refers to it as a Johnny Cash song. She's a musical prodigy and I feel she should know that it's a Nine Inch Nails song. My second issue was what happened when people were found out to be HTS carriers. It does change their lives and future prospects but it didn't make perfect sense to me. Do the government think everyone with the gene will turn out to be a killer? If so, why keep them around people and in schools if you truly believe they are all going to snap and kill someone? The government were mental, but clearly not mental enough.

This was such a great read for me and exactly the kind of book I needed. The end doesn't end on a huge cliff hanger but leaves it very, very open for the sequel. In all honesty, it left me wanting to invent a time machine so I can go forward in time and get the sequel and a few others while I'm at it. I will definitely be continuing the series and can't wait for the next book.

5/5 Butterflies

I really loved this and I can't wait for the sequel. The romance was slow building and the tension was getting to me by the end! The premise was brilliant and pulled off really well and the second half of the book really sucked me into the story and wouldn't let me go. This was all kinds of mind-blowingly, out-of-this-world, I-am-in-love awesomeness. Where is the sequel? Gives it to me.... GIVES ME THE PRECIOUS!

*I received a copy of this novel from the author/publisher/publicist via Edelweiss in exchange for a free and honest review and received no monetary compensation for this review.