This was a 2.5 star read for me, rounded to 3.0 stars.

Thank you Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for this arc.

While I enjoyed the book and it was a pretty quick read, it definitely felt like YA to me..... young teens in some implausibly "adult" situations. Did I stay up all night reading it? No.
Was it fanciful? No again.

Do I remember any of the characters 4 days after I finished reading it? Nope again.

But I still thought it was better than whatever was on TV at the time.

I really should have liked this book more than I actually did. It’s reminiscent of X-men: individuals with special talents are recruited into a special school for training. Here, the talents are all psychic in nature. Teddy is in a lot of trouble when she’s recruited into the program: she’s been banned from casinos in Los Vegas, and card sharks are threatening both her and her family.

I love novels about schools catering to unique abilities, but this one was just okay. Their classes are interesting, but it just didn’t have the same amount of wonder and novelty I was expecting.

Perhaps it’s because I couldn’t really relate to Teddy. She’s a complex character, but in many ways she came away as seeming flat and undeveloped. I did find her origin story interesting, and I’m assuming that the sequel will have more information about that. But ultimately, I felt a bit “meh” about the whole novel.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC.

School for Psychics by K.C. Archer is the first book in the new School for Psychics paranormal young adult fantasy series. The main character in this series is Teddy Cannon, a twenty-something college dropout who has gotten herself deeply in debt in her hometown of Las Vegas. It does not take long for Teddy to get banned from the casinos for “cheating” which is something that she claims she has never done. Not to mention that she has a massive gambling debt that she owes to someone who wants nothing more than for her to pay off her debt.

When things become worse and the breaking point is near, Teddy meets Clint unexpectedly at the casino she is banned from. The night goes off track and soon Teddy is presented with the offer to attend a school far from home. If she chooses to attend her debts will be wiped cleaned and her family will be safe. The school is unlike any other because it is a school for psychics.

A story that is sure to draw you in and capture your attention from the beginning with unexpected twists and turns, mystery and intriguing. You will never expect what could be lurking just beyond the next page. School for Psychics is full of creative and interesting characters that are well developed with unique backstories that are truly out of this world. The setting is a picture-perfect campus that is located on an island not far from California.

If you love reading young adult paranormal fantasy novels, you should add this to your reading list. I really enjoyed reading School for Psychics and highly recommend this novel.

It has been a long time since I read a book and was so excite to see that it was the beginning of a series but his book was that!

Sadly I could not find it in me to finish reading this. The story meandered too much. I don't know that it would appeal to the less committed reader.

The School For Psychics moves at a steady pace and has an interesting storyl ine. I not really read any book based on psychics but i have thoroughly enjoyed other stories that center around special powers. I read this while i was power walking at the gym and i was drawn into the world every time. I especially enjoyed that though i thought who was the bad guys and who wasn't i really did not know. Their was enough twists and turns in this story to keep me guessing all the way to the end. I would really love to read and review the next one in the series and am thankfully i was selected for the first one.

Thank you to netgalley and the author/publisher for a copy of SCHOOL FOR PSYCHICS in exchange for an honest review.

I am completely intrigued by the concept of this book. It has such a reality realm that you forget that there is a fantasy perspective at play. When Teddy is invited to attend a special school on Angel Island in San Francisco she discovers she may have a unique psychic ability, but what begins as a growth opportunity and a second chance turns quickly into a much deeper darker experience than she signed up for. When her classmates start vanishing and secrets begin bubbling up to the surface, her world quickly turns into a life or death challenge.

Since this book is the first in a series, it is not surprising that the first half of the book was spent setting up the scene, building background and establishing the characters. The initial book of any series generally reads a little slower and dryer than the rest of the series. Archer, however, did a decent job of filling the book with useful information while still keeping the ball rolling. While it was not an edge of the seat page turner for the first half, it still held my attention and kept me engaged. At times there were so many things going on, and I knew they must intertwine somehow, but it almost felt like over stimulation. The pacing was not as smooth as I would hope.

That said, a note on the positives. For one, I really liked Teddy. She is a bit rough around the edges, but quirky can be good and I think she is a likable character. Also, I enjoy the fact these unique, but otherwise ordinary individuals get a chance to work in a secret government sector. I am curious enough to read book two and give these psychics another opportunity to win my heart over.

SCHOOL FOR PSYCHICS by KC Archer follows Teddy Cannon, a psychic who until recently didn't know she was a psychic, who enters a government approved training school for people with psychic abilities. Teddy meets an array of fellow students at the school, each of which has their own sorted tale. It becomes clear that Teddy has more psychic gifts than the others and Teddy uses her recent friendships and her special abilities to find the truth about the school, who her parents really were and why she is so important.
Archer creates a world similar to other recent book series that takes the reader to a secret school for people with special abilities. While many of the characters are well written and properly developed to match the amount they are a part of the story, at times I think Archer was throwing random tidbits out that seemed unnecessary and not particularly informative about some of the smaller characters in the book. The plot is a bit predictable but still fun and layered with twists, and the final climax scenes are exciting and fun to read. Archer also throws in a little love triangle, which at times was exciting, but other times it distracted from the story.
I like the premise and the main characters in SCHOOL FOR PSYCHICS and I would consider trying another book in the series if there is one.

K.C. Archer’s School for Psychics is the first novel in a new urban fantasy series of the same name. I was initially drawn to this book because I have a thing for books that are set in boarding schools for young people with special abilities or skills and when I read the synopsis for this book, I immediately got vibes of the Harry Potter series and Nevernight. Those are two of my favorites so the idea of a similar book but that focuses on training psychics instead of wizards or assassins had me totally on board.

School for Psychics follows twenty-something Teddy Cannon, a bright and resourceful young woman who has an uncanny ability to read people. Even though Teddy is smart, however, she has apparently made some questionable decisions in her life and is currently living in her parents’ garage in a make-shift apartment. When the story opens, we learn that Teddy has also been banned from nearly every casino in the Las Vegas area. She has been using her ability to read people to win money in the casinos and also gotten into some trouble with some unsavory individuals that she now owes a lot of money to. We meet Teddy as she is dressed incognito trying to sneak into a casino with money she has “borrowed” from her parents in hopes of turning it into major winnings so that she can pay back her gambling debt. Teddy’s plan goes awry, however, and she tries unsuccessfully to make a fast getaway. A stranger intervenes and gets her out of trouble, only to then tell her that he has been watching her. He informs her that she can read people the way she can because she is actually psychic. He then invites her to come to the School of Psychics where she can train with others like her in areas such as telepathy, telekinesis, investigative skills, and SWAT tactics. Upon graduation, she would go on to serve the U.S. government, using her skills to protect America, and the world.

Teddy is of course skeptical but ultimately agrees to come to the school. In her mind, she has been a screw up for most of her life and would love to finally be able to do something to make her adoptive parents proud of her. At first the school is pretty much what Teddy expected it to be. She slowly begins to settle in, get used to her classes, and for the first time, actually make real friends. But then strange things start happening – there are break-ins, students go missing, and more. It leads Teddy to become part of a dangerous mission, one that will ultimately cause her to question everything she thought she knew – her teachers, her friends, her family, and even herself.

Teddy was definitely a big draw for me. I liked her character from the first moment I met her, trying to scam her way into that casino. She was the ultimate underdog so I immediately found myself in her corner. She’s also one of those complicated, messy characters that I so adore. I saw that right away when she demonstrated street smarts and tremendous confidence with just a hint of guilt about what she had done to her parents. I liked how conflicted she was and wanted to not only learn more about her, but I also wanted her to succeed, not only in the short term when it came to getting herself out of trouble but also in her desire to finally do something to make her parents proud.

She’s also a very realistic character in the sense that she is in no way perfect and tends to make questionable choices quite often. One that immediately comes to mind happens almost as soon as she arrives at the school. She shows up late to one portion of her entrance exam because she got drunk and hooked up with a guy. I just sat there like “Whhhyyyyyyy? How are you supposed to turn things around and make your parents proud if you get kicked out before you even start?!” She frustrated me to no end with decisions like that, but it made her character growth as I moved through the story that much more satisfying. She’s still not perfect by any stretch by the end, but she has come so far.

On a slightly different note, I also found her psychic abilities quite fascinating. All of her classmates had interesting abilities as well, but Teddy’s abilities were quite rare and apparently were inherited from her birth parents who died in a car accident when she was very young. Her rare abilities make her of particular interest to those in change.

The setting also really appealed to me, both the Las Vegas setting where Teddy starts out and then the island off the California coast where the school is set. I was especially intrigued by that since at one point, it’s mentioned that some students can see Alcatraz prison from their windows. I just thought that was cool.

Finally, I liked the mystery that comes into play by about the halfway point of the book. It moves the story to a whole new level by having it be about more than just this group of young people attending classes and honing their skills. I don’t want to go into any details about what the mystery is about, other than to say it basically turns Teddy’s entire life and everything she has ever thought she knew about herself and her birth parents upside down and it also opens the door for this series to take an exciting and possibly darker turn as we have to consider what the government could be using people with Teddy’s abilities for. Is it all solely for the common good?

While I did end up enjoying School for Psychics overall, I do have to admit that my reaction to the early chapters was mixed. The opening scene with Teddy running her scam in the casino hooked me immediately but then surprisingly enough, once Teddy got to the school, I found myself less interested and actually more confused than anything else. Why? Mainly because Teddy and her new classmates are supposed to be young adults, with Teddy in particular being in her twenties, but most of them seem so immature. Teddy confused me the most in this respect because while she was running her scam at the casino, she came across as very street smart and worldly, but then as soon as she stepped onto the campus of the school for psychics, it’s like her personality changed and she became obsessed with every cute guy she came across. It was a little off-putting how immature she suddenly seemed and I thought about giving up on the book at that point, but thankfully Teddy quickly settled in and began to focus more on her classes and less on the guys.

One other issue I had, which was also early on in the book was what I considered to be a case of flawed logic. It made no sense to me why this school would recruit students, have them pack up all their belongings and fly to California, only to tell them once they arrive on campus that they have to pass a series of tests in order to determine whether or not they would be a good fit at the school. In Teddy’s case, she is recruited and told that if she gives them four years of her life, they’ll settle her gambling debts and make sure her parents are safe from the guys who were threatening Teddy when the novel opens. Why make a promise like that to her but then have her take these tests to see if she can stay at the school? Again, I was glad I persevered since I ended up enjoying the rest of the story, but for a few chapters there, it had me wondering what I was getting myself into.

Even though I got off to a slightly rocky start with School of Psychics, the story definitely got stronger and stronger as it went along. I think it’s a solid first book for this new series and I look forward to seeing what’s in store for Teddy and her classmates in the next installment. I’d recommend School of Psychics for anyone like me who enjoys books set in boarding schools, as well as for anyone who enjoys urban fantasy and/or mysteries and has any interest in psychic abilities.

School for Physics by K. C. Archer is an explosive new urban fantasy series with a good dash of crime thriller on the side. It reads like a Harry Potter story for adults. I was on the edge of my seat almost the entire time and second guessing myself right to the very end.
Theodora Cannon, aka Teddy, lives in Las Vegas above the garage of her adopted parents’ house. After a series of very bad decisions she currently owes over a quarter of a million to a Russian loan shark. You are probably wondering how someone ends up in such a situation at so young an age. Simple, you like to gamble. Teddy has even gone so far as to “borrow” money from her parents’ retirement account.
Teddy does have one thing going for her, she thinks, the ability to know beyond a shadow of a doubt when someone is bluffing at the card table. This ability is the reason she has been banned from all the Las Vegas casinos. The casinos could never prove she was cheating so they have banned her. Yet she desperately needs to gamble and win enough to pay back the loan shark. Disguising herself, Teddy starts to win big at the Bellagio. Until misfortune once again befalls her and she loses it all.
Fortunately, a mysterious man, named Clint, comes to her aid and offers her a deal she can’t refuse. He explains that she is a physic and wants to recruit her to attend a school (Whitfield Institute for Law Enforcement Training and Development) for physics. He even promises to take care of her debt to the loan shark. At the school she will learn to use and control her gift while she trains for a future position in the government where she will use her ability to keep America safe.
Teddy is out of options and she accepts this as her one and only chance to make things right in her life. Once at Whitfield, Teddy settles into life as a student, going to class, studying and making friends. Then mysterious things start to happen, some blood samples are stolen from the campus lab and a short time later a couple of students go missing. Teddy learns that one of the samples is hers and the other samples are from the missing students. Will she be next? She becomes obsessed with finding out the truth at all costs, even if it means she will be expelled from another school.
My favorite thing about the book was the cast of characters. Loved them and they fit so well with the plot. Of course, Teddy was my favorite. How can you not like a character who is good at heart yet so misguided. Teddy is a typical young adult that still has not figured herself out and she is so self-involved that she does not realize that her actions can have profound consequences not just for herself but for those around her. The plot was fast paced with lots of twists that were unexpected. I was never entirely sure who was on the good team and who was on the bad until the very end. Loved that!
The only down side is, I have to wait for the next installment!
I highly recommend School for Physics, for those adult kids, like myself, that loved the Harry Potter series.
I received a free copy from the publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for my honest opinion.

This book could be a great recommendation for those who grew up on Harry Potter. We have strong themes of friendship and psychic ability subsituted for magical ability. In this book, trainees, including Teddy Cannon, are also subjected to a punishing physical regimen (unlike those at Hogwarts). Just like at Hogwarts, learning to use pyschic ability requires not just talent, but tons and tons of practice. There are also themes of loneliness, frienship, and loyalty which may be satisfying to those who enjoyed the Harry Potter series.

This is the first book of a series. It was an interesting read with a lot of twists and turns. I think there should be better character development. This is a book that will appeal to all different types of readers from younger readers to adult. This was a pretty quick read.

This was tagged as “Harry Potter with millennials” which is sort of accurate.

But not really.

Teddy is our main character, a twenty year old who dropped out of college and is living with her parents. I guess that’s where the millennial comes from? She is excellent at gambling, particularly poker, and has a huge debt she owes to some shady guys. She is banned from most casinos in Vegas, but goes in a fat suit and wig anyway. Yep.

She gets caught and recruited to a school for psychics. Turns out that’s how she was so good at poker.

The school for psychics is a private initiative that trains people with psychic talents to go on to work with the government. They have liaisons with the FBI and CIA.

The school is more like a college, since everyone is in their 20s. But it’s also like high school, since they can’t leave the grounds and there’s a no drinking rule. Seriously.

That was my big issue with this book. These are adults who are in a college setting, but are given teen rules like no drinking, no sleeping together. So it’s like a bunch of college students went back to high school and act like high schoolers. That sounds like a nightmare I had once.

There are Teddy’s classmates who are an interesting bunch. There’s Pyro, who is pyrokinetic. That’s just his nickname that he came up with himself. No one told him it’s lame if you have to have your own nickname. But he’s a cool character, no pun intended. He was a cop before he was recruited, and has a lot of actual real world experience, unlike most milinneals.

There is also Jillian, a pet psychic who is hysterical. She’s Teddy’s roommate and I would love to meet her in real life. She’s just that awesome and brightened every scene she was in.

They take classes to hone their psychic abilities, improve their physical strength, and work with the FBI to help with cold cases. It was interesting. And I’m glad it wasn’t a bunch of teenagers telling the FBI what to do. That seems so unrealistic in teen fiction, so it seems better coming from adults, some who have worked in law enforcement.

There are a lot of tropes here, the adopted main character who is gifted, a secret conspiracy, powers as the plot demands, etc. The story itself is engaging and I finished it quickly.

But I have had issues with how it has been marketed. It’s hard to combine Harry Potter, which was a children’s series, with millennials, who are in their college years or beyond. Sure there’s a magic school, but that’s it. There’s a school for adults who act like teens with rules that treat their students like children. It’s kind of a mess.

I did enjoy this book, but it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. I’d borrow before buying or committing to this series.

I’d like to that the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to review this arc.

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed K.C. Archer's School for Psychics. I'm a huge fan of mystery novels and this one really hit a good spot for me. Teddy Cannon isn't your typical twenty-something year old woman - She's a daughter, a gambler and a psychic (but she doesn't know it yet). This book made you want and need to know what was happening at Whitfield. Filled with twists and turns and questionable choices, this book was a hit. Since it was the first book in the series, I'm excited and ready for the second book!

Teddy is definitely rather scattered, but what you don’t immediately appreciate at the beginning of the book, is the fear underlying her bolshie attitude. She could immediately sense when anyone was lying, right from when she was a small child – and that terrified her. I liked the flaws and her apparent flakiness, which we discover has a solid cause. As a result, the book does take some time before the story gathers momentum and really hits its stride.

While the story is told from first person viewpoint via Teddy’s character, we also get to know a number of the other students, though because she has a tendency to hold them at arm’s length, we don’t perhaps know them quite as well as we would like. But it also means that when the twists come, it is a surprise.

Himself, being the paranoid sort, immediately worried about who would be monitoring such a potentially powerful tool as an establishment where people with psychic powers can be trained and moulded into law enforcement officers. I was pleased to see this aspect is addressed as the book progresses and this bodes well for the second book in the series, which should give us more of the political landscape and open up the whole issue of psychic warfare as a wider subject.

This is an enjoyable start to a series that promises to continue gaining traction as it progresses and I look forward to the next book. Recommended for fans of mental powers and school-based stories. While I obtained an arc of School for Psychics from Netgalley, the opinions I have expressed are unbiased and my own.
8/10

Actual rating: 3.5 stars
This story is about Teddy who lives in Las Vegas, in the backyard of her parents. She really loves to play poker, and this is where the trouble begins. She owns a lot of money to someone, and tries one last time to win this money so she could pay him back. Teddy knows when her components are lying/bluffing, she thinks that it is just something she knows. But later that evening she learns that she knows this because she is a psychic. To learn more about her abilities she goes to a school for psychics. Here she learns she is not the only one, and makes friends with people with all sorts of abilities, like talking to animals. But then strange things start to happen.
I really enjoyed the originality of this story, because I don’t read a lot of books about psychics!
The first 60% of this book, I really liked and was flying through that. Than some things/people were introduced, and I don’t think this was done really well because it made me really confused about what was going on. Once I got back into the story, I definitely enjoyed it again! I think it was setting up for a sequel so I will be looking out for that.

The School for Psychics by K.C. Archer

First book in the School for Psychics series

1.75 stars

This novel follows Teddy Cannon, a misfit gambler who has been banned from the casinos on the Las Vegas Strip. She can’t kick the habit especially because she owes thousands to a dangerous man threatening her adoptive parents. Teddy has never been proven to be a cheater, but her ability to tell when people are lying has come in handy at the poker table. When Teddy is offered an opportunity to attend a school for psychics, Whitfield, that trains them to be operatives in government fields it seems to good to be true. The challenge Teddy faces is to pass her exams and not get kicked out of the school that can save her from destruction. I honestly didn’t know what to expect going into this novel. It seemed like a fun novel and who doesn’t want to read about a school of psychics? However, this book is bland and not at all what I was expecting. It’s racked full of clichés. Here is an example:
“Haven’t you wondered why you can do things other people can’t?”
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This feels so much like the famous scene in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone that I thought I was reading it for a second.
The dialogue in general within this novel is incredibly mediocre and unless I was told that this was an adult novel I wouldn’t have guessed that because the writing style seems juvenile and clunky. It’s also hard to buy that some of these characters are adults because the things they say are so cringey that I was getting second-hand embarrassment. Archer’s writing style can be very fast, but it can also be slow and I found that there was no good balance between the two. Either I was flying through the pages or forcing myself to carry on. Another problem I had was that there were so many major plot points being introduced past the 50% marker. When I’m reading a novel, I love to have new things introduced, but when new major plots are being added in without hugely impacting the story it becomes frustrating. For instance, there is a whole plot introduced in the spring semester of the story where the class has to solve whether a man killed his girlfriend or not. It was too much and it did nothing for this story. The ending I found to be the hardest to get through and stay entertained. I can’t really put my finger on it, but at a certain point I felt like the story was going nowhere particularly exciting and the plot was detrimental to the characters that I felt like I had to keep reading. I found myself getting a little bored at the climax of what was supposed to be a setup for the sequel.


Whimsical Writing Scale: 2

The main female character is Teddy. I am not a fan of Teddy at all. She is the epitome of a Mary Sue. I haven’t come across many of those lately and I was starting to think that writers were moving from this 2000s writing trope, but nope. Teddy’s power is a one-of-kind psychic ability that is just oh so rare and special. Also, Teddy is selfish. I haven’t read The Magicians by Lev Grossman, but I’ve heard all the characters are unlikable and it made me wonder if Archer was trying to capture this type of character in the similar setting that Grossman used. All I know is that even characters in the novel were calling her out for only going to people to get something to serve herself instead of genuinely caring about the people around her. In fact, I highlighted three quotes of people calling her out on this and did she change? Not really. She claimed she did, but I surely didn’t see that in her actions.


Kick-Butt Heroine Scale: 1

The Villain- I called it from the beginning of the missing blood vials. It was obvious and nobody saw it, which is completely baffling since these are all highly trained government specialists. I just don’t buy that the dean of the school didn’t see what was so stinking obvious and in everyone’s faces. Obviously, if this is the case the government is failing and everyone needs to be fired.


Villain Scale: 2

There is a wide cast of characters. The school is divided into Misfits and Alphas. Teddy and all her friends are misfits because they have never utilized their powers for success and have felt more like outcasts because of them. It makes sense that there would be two types of people who would utilize their powers, but none of the characters really stuck out to me. All of the characters were clichés of their ability. For instance, one of the characters that Teddy has a one-night stand with is a pyrokinetic and he is angsty and emo. Every pyrokinetic in film is angsty except for Charlie from Firestarter who was angry and vengeful and she was the best. Teddy’s roommate can also talk to animals and she is your stereotypical hippie who does yoga in the nude. Molly, an integral character, is a hacker and an empath. She exhibits all the usual hacker clichés, but it is amped up because of her inability to escape everyone else’s emotions. It’s hard to appreciate characters when they all represent an archetype and never expand past what the author presents to us. Then there is Clint, the dean of the school, and he feels like a younger Dumbledore and I just wasn’t buying him. Also, Teddy sleeping with her professor was just awkward and unnecessary.


Character Scale: 1.75

Overall, The School for Psychics had promise, but I wasn’t all that extremely impressed with it. I wish that I had enjoyed this novel more than I did, but this novel just wasn’t for me. I would, however, recommend it to fans of special schools that focuses more on the actual school.


Cover Thoughts: That giant blown up face in the middle of a pretty background ruins this cover for me.

Thank you, Netgalley and Simon & Schuster, for providing me with a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you Netgalley & Simon and Schuster for access to the eARC of this book!
School for Psychics is the first book in a new series from the enigmatic KC Archer. Our story begins as past mistakes are catching up with Teddy Cannon - as an alternative to paying the piper, she is recruited into a secret, government training program for those with Psychic abilities. Teddy has unique, powerful psychic abilities, and in learning to harness them she realizes that not everyone at the school is telling her the whole story. Action ensues.
This book has a fun premise, but some of the characters felt a little flat or underdeveloped. This is the first book in a series, so I'm excited to see if that development continues to occur. If you like a little magical realism with your police procedural, you'll probably enjoy this!

Adopted 20-something girl learns her epileptic fits and inability to fit in are really psychic traits best suited to elite training in government service. Her outsider status and repeated real-world failures find common ground among the other psychic recruits at the specialized training facility. The recruits break rules and test boundaries as they learn to harness their special talents. This tale will seem novel and exciting to younger readers early in their reading career. More seasoned readers may find the story a bit flat and trope-ish. This is the first in a planned series. I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and will definitely be looking for the next book in the series. I have a tendency to go for dark psychological thrillers and I usually have a hard time getting into other books but this was a perfect break from my dark side. It was light and easy to read. I like the main character Teddy and I'm excited to see where the next book takes her.