ARC Review: The School for Psychics by K. C. Archer

The School for Psychics
Author: K. C. Archer
Series: School for Psychics (Book 1)
Publication: Simon & Schuster (April 3, 2018)

Description: An entrancing new series starring a funny, impulsive, and sometimes self-congratulatory young woman who discovers she has psychic abilities—and then must decide whether she will use her skills for good or…not.

Teddy Cannon isn’t your typical twenty-something woman. She’s resourceful. She’s bright. She’s scrappy. She can also read people with uncanny precision. What she doesn’t realize: she’s actually psychic.

When a series of bad decisions leads Teddy to a run-in with the police, a mysterious stranger intervenes. He invites her to apply to the School for Psychics, a facility hidden off the coast of San Francisco where students are trained like Delta Force operatives: it’s competitive, cutthroat, and highly secretive. They’ll learn telepathy, telekinesis, investigative skills, and SWAT tactics. And if students survive their training, they go on to serve at the highest levels of government, using their skills to protect America, and the world.

In class, Teddy befriends Lucas, a rebel without a cause who can start and manipulate fire; Jillian, a hipster who can mediate communication between animals and humans; and Molly, a hacker who can apprehend the emotional state of another individual. But just as Teddy feels like she’s found where she might belong, strange things begin to happen: break-ins, missing students, and more. It leads Teddy to accept a dangerous mission that will ultimately cause her to question everything—her teachers, her friends, her family, and even herself.

Set in a world very much like our own, School for Psychics is the first book in a stay-up-all night series.

My Thoughts: THE SCHOOL FOR PSYCHICS was an interesting combination of science fiction, mystery, thriller, and coming of age novel. Teddy Cannon's life has gone considerably off track. She's twenty-four, has been expelled from Stanford, and is debt for a quarter of a million dollars to a loan shark because she gambled away money taken from her parents' retirement accounts. When we meet her, she's in disguise as she tries to slip into one of the casinos she's been banned from to find a poker game to win enough to pay the loan shark.

Teddy has a talent. She knows when people are lying which helps a lot when figuring out if other gamblers are bluffing but makes it hard for her to have relationships with people because even the common social lies grate on her. After blowing her stake, she meets a man who tells her that her problems come because she is psychic and who recruits her for the School for Psychics. Desperation forces her to give the school a try.

She finds herself on an island off the coast from San Francisco trying to gain control of her powers in the company of a group of other young psychics. She becomes friends with a group of her classmates known as the misfits since their powers tend to be unusual. Her roommate communicates with animals. The first person she meets is an empath who also happens to be a computer hacker. The first guy she likes starts fires with his mind.

They are being trained to work someday with the CIA or FBI or Homeland Security or the military so besides learning to use their psychic gifts they are also given training for law enforcement. They are also in competition with other first year students to keep their places at the school.

The mystery comes in a couple of ways. Teddy is an orphan but she learns that she has genetic markers that indicate that her birth parents were psychics. She also learns that she is one of three students whose parents died in mysterious car accidents and the other two have left the school abruptly and perhaps not by their choice. She also begins to believe that her mentor, the man who recruited her and is the dean of students, might know more about her than he's saying. As she and her new friends investigate, they come closer to learn all sorts of secrets.

I enjoyed this story. Teddy is an intriguing character who changes a lot through the story. I am eager to read more in this series to see what happens next.

Favorite Quote:

The Strip. If there was any place in the world as appropriately named, Teddy Cannon didn't know what it was. The Las Vegas Strip had been created for the sole purpose of stripping money from tourists, stripping clothing from women, stripping dignity from drunks, and stripping romance from weddings. And Teddy loved everything about it. 

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.