Review: The Predicteds

The Predicteds by Christine Seifert
Release Date ~ September 1, 2011
Sourcebooks Fire ~ Sourcebooks
ISBN13: 9781402260490
Review copy received from Raincoast Books

Goodreads Synopsis:

Your future is not your own...
"We wanted to know what makes a good kid good and a bad kid bad. Can you blame us for that? We found an astoundingly, marvelously simple answer: The brain isn't so much a complicated machine as it is a crystal ball. If you look into it, you will see everything you want to know."
-Dr. Mark Miliken, senior researcher at Utopia Laboratories
Who will it be?
Will the head cheerleader get pregnant?
Is the student council president a secret drug addict?
The whole school is freaking out about PROFILE, an experimental program that can predict students' future behavior.
The only question Daphne wants answered is whether Jesse will ask her out...but he's a Predicted, and there's something about his future he's not telling her.


How far would you go to prevent a crime? What if you could keep someone from getting hurt?

If we had the ability to literally predict if someone would act out in violence in the future, what would we do about it?

The Predicteds isn't your typical YA book; in fact, I'm fairly convinced it's a cleverly disguised philosophical and political discussion dressed up as a YA book. But the idea behind it is positively BRILLIANT.

1. Some truly brilliant & thoughtful questions:
   The entire theme of The Predicteds deals with the above questions. And it isn't as easy of an answer as most of us would like to think. And Christine does such a great job raising these questions, in the form of a book that really makes the reader step back and think about their preconceived notions.
2. Unpredictability:
   I was able to figure out one of the bigger twists (one that really isn't all that surprising) but the book was just filled with a number of unexpected plot turns that I didn't see coming - sometimes I wonder if I'm just losing my touch. But I really think the ending was unpredictable in a way that made me rethink the entire story and its characters.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed by the overall execution of the book and didn't find myself easily enamoured with the story or its characters. I didn't feel much of a strong connection to any of them, and was disappointed by how slowly most of the story progressed for such an exciting concept. I really don't think I would have enjoyed the book had it not been for the themes in it, and how it appealed to the legal side of me (interest-wise). BUT I loved the concept so much, and the brilliant thinking on Christine's part swayed me enough to decide that this one's worth reading for the ability to raise new questions alone.