ARC Review: “Mind Games” by Kiersten White

Mind Games (Mind Games #1) by Kiersten White

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Fia was born with flawless instincts. Her first impulse, her gut feeling, is always exactly right. Her sister, Annie, is blind to the world around her—except when her mind is gripped by strange visions of the future.

Trapped in a school that uses girls with extraordinary powers as tools for corporate espionage, Annie and Fia are forced to choose over and over between using their abilities in twisted, unthinkable ways… or risking each other’s lives by refusing to obey.

In a stunning departure from her New York Times bestselling Paranormalcy trilogy, Kiersten White delivers a slick, edgy, heartstoppingly intense psychological thriller about two sisters determined to protect each other—no matter the cost.

5 stars

Thanks to HarperTeen and Edelweiss for this eARC! This title will be available February 19th, 2013.

This should not have worked. This should not have been good. Everything about this book was begging for me to hate it.

So why did I love it so much?

Here’s why I shouldn’t have loved Mind Games:

1. It’s written by Kiersten White and it’s NOT about Evie and Lend, to which nothing was supposed to compare.
2. The point of view is constantly switching between two sisters.
3. The point of view not only switches between characters, but switches between the past and the present.
4. There is a love triangle beginning for one of the sisters.
5. I hate false advertising. This book isn’t really a “slick, edgy, heartstoppingly intense psychological thriller” as descriped in the blurb. I wasn’t ever particularly scared or anything.

AND YET I LOVED IT.

All of my feels about this book are hard to explain. But hold on, let me back up a little. This book is about two sisters with psychic powers who have been orphaned and “taken in” by this school for girls with psychic powers. The problem is that this school is not a nice place, and they’re using these girls for evil purposes. The first sister’s name is Annie, and she’s blind—but a Seer. So her sight is really more useful in the long run. Her sister Fia is like nothing anyone has ever seen before, because she has these great instincts that tell her everything from the right stocks to pick to how to perfectly fight someone—and also keep her from being able to be seen by Seers. The school that’s taken them in is training Fia to be their killer while holding Annie for collateral. The book opens with Fia out on her first hit, which she is unable to carry out. And then it all goes downhill from there.

I was not amused with the book started going back and forth between Fia and Annie, and even less so when the book kept going into chapters of flashbacks. Usually, this DOES NOT WORK. But with this one … it did. It ACTUALLY WORKED and I don’t know how. The flashbacks actually did their job of making the story and the characters even deeper while never taking away from the flow and process of the present storyline. WITH FLASHBACKS, I felt like the plot never stopped moving forward, and fast. I’m still going gaga about that.

The characters of Fia and Annie were very different, and their voices really came through. Honestly, I wasn’t that impressed with Annie, but Fia entirely makes up for it. She is broken, she is battered, she is stubborn and she is a fighter. Living in Fia’s head is painful and terrible and breathtaking.

Usually I wouldn’t be a fan of the love triangle that was set up either, but here it totally made sense. The characters aren’t throwing themselves at each other, and they aren’t eternally in love with each other from the start either. There’s a mutual attraction that pulls one of the sisters in two ways that make utter and total sense.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but here it goes: I think that Mind Games is better than the Paranormalcy books. I mean, the two books are REALLY DIFFERENT, but I think as a crafted object Mind Games is actually better. There’s a less of White’s humor in here, but her story writing seems to have reached a new level with this one.

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