The expression "don't judge a book by its cover" is very apropos here. When I read the title, I was quite unimpressed as it comes across as being very generic. The description was intriguing enough that I requested a review copy and I am very happy that I did. One I started reading the book I could not put it down, finishing it the same day I started it. Wonderful characters, creative plot twists, and an ending that begs for a sequel. Thank you for creating a wonderful world of psychic fantasy.

The School for Psychics is the first book in a new series by K. C. Archer, due for release 03 April, 2018 from Simon and Schuster. The book covers the recruitment and first year of a group of young paranormals at a training college for psychics of all types from a pyrokinetic (Lucas, inevitably nicknamed 'Pyro') to animal medium (Jillian) and psychometrist (Jeremy). The main character, Theodora/Teddy is an astral telepath who combines a bad attitude and trust issues with out of control psychic ability.

The entire setup has a very X-Men/New Mutants vibe, but the author has successfully resisted much of the temptation to play off of the usual stereotypes. There is, however, a lot of 'cool kids' vs. 'misfits' included as well as breaking curfew and sleeping around. The sex (clean, and implied rather than graphic), drinking, etc, isn't as disturbing as it would be in another YA novel, since all of the principle players are over the age of consent, but the book certainly feels like a YA book. All of the content is safe for work, so no need to avoid reading it on the bus commute or lunchtime.

The book is well written technically. The dialogue flows well and the story moves along at a good clip. The psychic dialogue was well handled (mostly in italics), and wasn't confusing to read. I never had trouble figuring out what was going on.

Available in ebook, paperback, and audio formats, 368 pages, due out 3rd April. I recently saw that the movie rights have already been optioned, so a film is likely at some point.

Three and a half stars, shadowy government agencies, good vs. evil psychics, escapist fun.

2.5 stars

The book begins as Teddy Cannon is gambling in Vegas. She is in disguise as she has been banned from most casinos. She doesn't count cards or cheat, but she does have an ability to "read" people. She knows what they are going to do and can make her moves accordingly. She owes a lot of money and needs to make it back so that she can pay off her debts and start over.

What Teddy sees as an "ability" is proof that she is "psychic". She is approached at the casino and offered a chance to work on her skills and to learn more about her abilities. Where? At a school for psychics of course. There she meets others with various abilities and they all must pass the test to study at the school.

Teddy seems to digress a little in age for me. At the beginning of the book she comes off as older and more mature. Yes, she is playing a role at the casino, but still her thoughts and mannerisms make her appear older. When she gets to the school, she suddenly feels like a teenager who can't decide what "hot" guy she wants to be with or what she is going to do.

She, and the other students do get to learn new skills and perfect the one skills they already possess to help their government. Plus, Teddy finds out some secrets about her past which also add to the intrigue and story-line. Also, this book has mystery, romance, the element of who can I trust, secrets, etc. Sounds like an interesting premise but it fell flat for me. Was this the case of "it's not you - it's me" I just had a hard time getting into this book. I think there are parts of this book that many will like but this just wasn't really my cup of tea.


I received a copy of this book from Simon & Schuster and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Teddy is a risk taker, gambler, and in trouble. Kicked out of college for gambling, banned from the strip in Vegas she is down on her luck and is itching for a fix. Picked up by the founder of a school for psychics Teddy is out of options and decides to give it a try. I didn’t like Teddy, I really tried I just could not warm up to her. The story felt very predictable and I really could not find myself liking anyone by the end of the book.

This one was surprisingly uneven, hence only three stars despite some things I really liked... It started out strong, with some hysterical insights and one-liners. Teddy is a snarky cynic - two qualities I quite admire in protagonists. She's also willful and self-deceptive and nowhere near as independent as she wants everyone (including herself) to think she is. Those characteristics often combine into complex and interesting main characters. But they can also combine into tropes fairly easily. Teddy dances the line between C&I and T a little too much for my taste - which is the cause for most of my "surprisingly uneven" comment...

There's some really cool and fun stuff here. None of it is altogether original. A misfit finds out she's more than anyone (again, including herself) thought. An orphan learns secrets about her birth parents. A loner discovers she needs people. The quiet unprepossessing types are the ones hiding the most. Kids have to save the world. It's a lot of stuff that's been done before. That isn't to say that it isn't a fun read - it was, for the most part, largely because of the snark and cynicism of Teddy. But there were parts that I skimmed because they felt all too "been there, done that" too...

Teddy is immediately likeable because she has panache and has beaten the system at an early age. On notice with every Vegas casino and owing money she gambles in disguise hoping for a big payout. Things start to go downhill and she is saved by a mysterious good looking man who wants to recruit her for a special spy school for psychics. She won't go back to Stamford and returning in disgrace to her aunt and uncle's house is not an option so she tries her luck at honing her psychic abilities to do good. At the school she bonds with a group of misfits and is pretty happy until strange things begin to happen making her question the school and what she knew of her parents. You will love the irascible Teddy and her band of merry misfits. This is a promising start to a new approach to the standard spy novel. Think of it like "The Magicians" meets "Homeland". My thanks to the publisher for the advance copy.

I enjoyed this novel about a young woman who is struggling to find her way and ends up as a recruit to a government sponsored school for psychics on Angel Island. It was an interesting read. It's the first book of a series. I'd like to see better character development. It wasn't always easy to find the motivation for some of the students decisions. Part of this is because there is a lot left to be discovered, that I assume will be revealed in future volumes, but it did make the reading feel a bit disjointed at times.

Nothing out of the ordinary, another book about a school for special kids, the usual drama...easy to read but I would not buy it or recommend it

Theodora (Teddy for short) Cannon. She is a Stanford dropout, a gambling addict who owes a quarter of a million dollars to a Russian Loan Shark. She lives in her parents’ garage. She has failed so many times at so many things. She is about to be a student at the Whitfield Institute for Law Enforcement Training and Development and failure is not an option this time even though she has no idea what she is doing.

So here we are contemplating:
Astral telepathy and telekinesis. – Possible
A government school for training those with these attributes – assuredly
Double dealing and dirty tricks – what would the world and this book be without them?
Smarmy undefined sexual encounters – confusing and unnecessary but happening anyway.

The book moved along and made sense, sort of. Additional character development, backstory and insight would have been helpful and made this a more coherent story. Perhaps things will be fleshed out in the books to follow.

Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for an ARC

Not quite what I expected.... not that that’s necessarily bad? The writing to have a YA , drama-filled “OMG!” vibe to it at times but also drew me in. Would definitely read the next in the series, if just for the next show to drop.
Thanks to netgaley & simon & schuster for this arc!

I actually requested this on a whim. It's a great, fun treat with a bit of drama, mystery, legalese, and psychics, all rolled together. Delighted to see that it's going to be a series, even if I do hate waiting for the next book in situations like these.

In this YA paranormal romance, Teddy is still living in her parent's garage, having been kicked out of college and is in trouble for gambling. When she is caught in a casino that she has been banned from, she is given the choice of going to a school for psychics. She falls in with a group of misfits and learns how to use her own psychic ability that she had not known that she even had. Mystery, intrigue and romance abound in this first book in a new series. I think that fans of Twilight and Harry Potter will enjoy it.

School for psychics? Sign me up! First in a series. Fun, romp of a book with nice set up for the school and then nice transition into the primary thriller-like adventure. Read straight through. Recommended.

I loved this book. It exceeded my expectations in the best way. I was constantly surprised by all the twists and turns. What a great launchpad for a new series!

This book was definitely fun! I was interested in this since I heard it was a mix of Harry Potter and Percy Jackson like tropes. I was not disappointed either. This book kept me captivated form page one and I found it flawless and the writing brilliant! 5 stars from me.

2.5 stars

In many ways, this story is much like the gazillion YA books in which teens discover they have some super-special abilities and are recruited to attend a secret school. Cue in misfits vs. popular/mean kids, a bit of potential romance, some secret goings-on, etc. The School for Psychics is for a bit older crowd (so the drinking and sex aren’t quite as taboo) but the dynamics are similar for much of the book.

I liked Teddy for the most part and the premise has potential, but it was limited by a number of inconsistencies and things that made no sense. <spoiler>One small example: Bringing all the school candidates to campus before weeding most out with a simple test to confirm their psychic abilities added drama but it would have made more sense to do this weeding out before bringing them to the super-secret location.</spoiler> I also became frustrated many times with Teddy for ignoring the obvious. <spoiler>How in the world could she trust Jeremy with her secret about wanting the FBI file when he obviously conspired against her in the test and openly espoused the “ends justify the means” attitude of her probable enemies? Why also did she not question Clint after he told her that her mom had left her in his care? He obviously must have been involved with her adoption, knew exactly who and what she was from the start, and probably arranged for her problems with Sergei to more easily fall into his scheme of getting her to the school. For that matter, why the ruse at all? Why did he not simply approach her and tell her at least part of the truth from the start?</spoiler>

Despite the story’s shortcomings, I had no trouble reading to the end and it was a mostly enjoyable diversion. But it wasn’t enjoyable enough to induce me to read the next book in the series.

I love the premise of this book. A school for young psychics with the elements of romance and action. I couldn’t wait to start reading this. I wasn’t disappointed in this light hearted story told from the perspective of Teddy who is also searching for her parents. Definitely a good read.

Teddy Cannon grew up thinking she had epilepsy and was shocked to find out she didn’t but was psychic. It explained why the epilepsy medicine didn’t seem to work.
She was a poker playing gambler who had been banned from every casino on the strip in Vegas. Bad news for someone who needs money and owes the mob a lot of it. One night she puts on a disguise and goes gambling. She is winning until all of a sudden her mojo changes. The casino pit bosses recognize her. She takes off and gets stopped by someone who promises to help her. He is the one who reveals she is psychic and offers a chance to do good for the world and in return have her debts paid off.
Off she goes to a government run school for psychics where she and others learn to hone their craft and do good.
Any twists and turns happen while Teddy finds out about her childhood and her life that she never knew about.

So good you can't put it down, A School for Psychics is full of action and people with cool abilities. What you find out as you read it is that it has a wonderfully written sense of humor about it too. I got so into the story I forgot I was reading on my kindle and reached up to turn the page!! I cannot wait to read the rest of the series.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Teddy is a 24-year-old woman from Vegas who has a natural affinity for gambling. She can always tell when someone is fibbing. One night she is dressed in disguise in order to earn back money she owes a mobster but has a run in with police. Someone comes to her rescue, claiming to be a recruiter of a school for psychics. In exchange for enrolling, Teddy will have her debts erased, so she agrees to go.

I think the most enticing thing about this book is the fact that it has a 24 year old woman who finds out that she has psychic abilities and is then sent to a school for psychics to develop her skills. If I switch 24 to 11, woman to boy, and psychic to wizard, we get the premise to Harry Potter. Most of the generation that grew up with Harry Potter (including myself) is in their 20s to early 30s at this point and wish to get that feeling again with a main character whose age is much closer to ours. It’s helping us naturally connect to those characters while getting to go to a school to learn about preternatural abilities. However, the author’s execution of this is quite juvenile. With characters in their 20s I would hope to have a cast who behave as though they are in graduate school. People who are serious about the opportunity to study something new and engage with it in creative and intelligent ways. Instead it felt like a bunch of kids in high school with gossip, partying, and drama. Our class of first years is even divided up into a group of students with extraordinary abilities, the Alphas, and a group of the not-so-extraordinary, the Misfits. The school pits the Alphas against the Misfits in competition which just makes it feel like the popular jocks versus the loser club. There’s even a class that involves running through obstacle courses making it seem like the jocks versus the nerds in high school gym class.

Additionally, our main character Teddy finds herself choosing between two hot guys. We just needed a love triangle to further set our lovely YA tone. Both of these two hot guys main characteristics are that they are hot and sexy. One even has the physic ability of pyrokinesis just to show you how hot he really is!

The writing style is quite simple. Many sentences are short and things move rather quickly. The entire novel takes place over a year and the author has very large time skips to accomplish this. It doesn’t allow or show much development for the characters in between events and it causes some relationships to seem rushed or less genuine. Again, I think the aim was to pull in Harry Potter readers with each book being a year in school.

Some bright points of the book include all of the different psychic abilities the author managed to pull together. An average reader will think of a psychic as either being able to read minds and/or see the future, and while those exist in this novel, there are still more to be explored and taught in coursework. I especially liked it when we get some of the details in class as to how these abilities work. Some physics have only one ability and others have more. No one is a “special snowflake” who can do everything, and leaves more to be explored and learned in later books.

I think this book is a good book for readers who enjoy simple and fast-paced plots. I definitely liked the first half better as the author developed the setting, but the latter half gets into a mysterious government conspiracy-type plot, which I just felt was silly. It makes some sense in that most psychics work for the government, but I wanted to see a little bit more originality.