kindreddreamheart

Uninvited is one of those novels that mirrors the issues of real life so much that the lines of fiction become blurred. We live in a time where random acts of violence and mass murders are all too common. There have been massacres on college campuses from single gunmen. Children and faculty were slaughtered on a regular school day. A slew of athletes terrorized at a marathon. The list goes on. We are a nation constantly on edge from a danger that could be the very person we speak to everyday. The fear is “never truly knowing the cause of it all”. The public can only be mollified with gun control and theories of mental illness for so long. In Uninvited, researchers have narrowed it down to one common denominator that can be found in a single gene; and the government to a single conclusion: Control the HTS carriers, control the killings.

 

Uninvited was gripping, chilling, and all too believable. Sophie Jordan trail blazes this story with a character sure to evoke sympathy and outrage from the reader. Davy Hamilton is the American Dream. She’s a blond hair, virgin female musical prodigy, dating the most popular jock, and born into a wealthy & respectful family. Yet none of this could save her from her own DNA. Davy is a vision of everything perceived as pure; and she carries the “kill gene”. The irony is staggering. Once diagnosed, Davy goes from Pretty in Pink & Clueless to Orange is the New Black. She is ostracized by her friends, denounced by her family, “uninvited” by her school, dumped by the love of her life, and completely thrown to the wolves of the killers she is labeled as being amongst. The magnitude of her loss is, lump in the back of your throat, tangible. Contrarily to other dystopian novels, this heroine doesn’t automatically turn kick ass overnight, she wallows in her loss for a while, and for that I find her very believable.

 

The world of Uninvited, as seen through the eyes of a HTS carrier, is so oppressive, it’s downright suffocating. The iron hand of the law is a sliver notch able genocide and restructured holocaust. This world WILL piss you off. My only complaint is there was a lot of rebuttal to the HTS theory. While some HTS identified were certifiable sociopaths, others appeared dormant. It made me question the science behind the hypothesis. Since the case studies weren’t fully disclosed it left me wondering. This wasn’t enough to take away from my overall enjoyment. The romance is sweetly paced and the buildup will leave you breathless. The suspense and action makes Uninvited worth the read. I would recommend to fans of dystopian. This was my first Sophie Jordan novel and I hope to read more of her work. I look forward to the conclusion in the next novel.