The Predicteds by Christine Seifert

The Predicteds by Christine Seifert
Release Date – September 1, 2011
Publisher – Sourcebooks Fire
Pages - 320
My Rating- 7/10
Obtained - from Book Expo America for an honest review

Here is the Goodreads synopsis

Daphne is the new girl in town and is having trouble fitting in. At least she has Jesse... sort of. He wants to be more than "just friends," but there's something he's not telling her about his past. Something dangerous. When a female student is brutally attacked, police turn to PROFILE, a new program that can predict a student's capacity for drug use, pregnancy, and violent behavior, to solve the case. As the witch hunt ensues, Daphne is forced to question her feelings for Jesse-and what she will do if her first love turns out to be a killer.

When I first heard of this book I thought the idea behind it was unique and could be really awesome. It touches on a timely subject matter - violent crimes in schools and how to prevent them - so I was curious to see how that would relate to the story.

Daphne is a character that I like. She had a bit of snarkiness to her, and stood up for herself and others. There are other characters in the book that stood out to me as well - Jesse, Dizzy, January. However, most of the characters are just your typical high school students. It works for the story, but nobody really stands out.

The PROFILE program is interesting. It opens a whole bunch of questions that will get conversations going. Is this type of program a good thing? Can it accurately predict something like this or are there too many outside factors? I kept thinking that if they never knew the results would the outcome have been the same, or are you just putting the idea in someone’s head? We get to see what the effect of finding out you are predicted is on different characters, and that aspect was interesting. I wish it had been explored more.

I felt there were a few places left unexplored that could have made this go from an ok read to an excellent read.

The “predicted” children are separated from the others at school and we never really get to experience their side of the school. We never really get to find out what is going on with the families of these children either. I mean, if my child was separated and basically deemed not worth teaching I would be doing everything I could to protest it. If I was a student and segregated I would not have accepted it. I didn’t see any of them really fighting it.

There is a popular girl who finds out she is predicted and it would have been interesting to see what that did to her, and how she took it, sadly we don’t see much of her after the results are revealed.

The segregation and bias that happens from the PROFILE results being released is the best part of the novel. It’s wonderfully written and handled. I loved that Daphne stuck to what she believed in, and didn’t back down. It really showed you how people can react to things and how quickly paranoia can spread.

The writing style itself is easy to read, kept my interest, and I could see where a lot of people would like this novel. I just wanted to dive into some topics more, as it really touched on some interesting questions that could have been explored.