Hello Everyone :)
I pray today finds you all doing well, and I want to thank you all for joining me for another book review here on The Preppy Book Princess.
Back in my early days of book blogging, I was all about young adult dystopians. I read so many of them over the years, and while some of them I still consider favorites, I've also had experiences with quite a few of them that weren't great, and honestly, a lot of them started to mesh together after reading so many.
However, I recently stumbled upon one that sounded amazing, and that was actually published by a Christian publisher which I was hoping would mean it would be a clean read.
Keep reading below to find out if this one ended up living up to my expectations.
The Hadley Academy for the Improbably Gifted by Connor Grennan:
Source: Library
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Publication Date: October 8th, 2019
Genre: Young Adult Fiction/Dystopian
Synopsis:
Jack Carlson is dreading a class presentation when he suddenly finds himself transported to the Hadley Academy, a secret institution that tracks teens with unlikely gifts and trains them to protect the world from an unseen squad of killers. But Jack isn't the only one who doesn't know what he's doing at Hadley. Despite indications that he is the one prophesied to end the ancient Reaper War, Jack appears to have no extraordinary abilities.
So when dark, mysterious forces grow, Hadley is in a confused panic. Much to everyone's dismay, humanity seems to depend on Jack and his new teammates. Can Hadley's rawest recruits push past personal struggles and enormous doubts, develop their dormant powers, and stop the spreading evil? And are they willing to commit to Hadley's motto, "One Life for Many," and make the ultimate sacrifice? The Hadley Academy for the Improbably Gifted might be just the place for Jack after all.
(synopsis from goodreads)
My Review:
I have to be honest that I had pretty high expectations for this one. The synopsis sounded amazing, and it had been such a long time since I last read a really great dystopian. However, while there were certain elements I did end up enjoying, it definitely wasn't what I was either expecting or hoping for, and it did end up leaving me a tad disappointed.
I did enjoy the setting, and the "magic system", I loved how it was a type of boarding school situation, and also, the idea that technically everyone has a gift, just most of us don't ever figure out how to use it. I thought that was kind of a unique approach to the set up for everything, and it kept me engaged.
I also did enjoy the friend group, and how they come to work together, and learn to put each other above their own wants and ideals. While I didn't really warm to any of the characters individually, I did like how they all came together as a group, putting their differences aside to do all they could to save humanity.
However, the last quarter or so of this book really threw me for a loop, and I was left feeling extremely confused by how everything ended up going down. This maybe wouldn't have been such a big deal if the book had ended up having a sequel, but it kind of felt incomplete as a stand alone, and I thought everything was rushed too much to fit within the word count.
Overall, I enjoyed it for what it was, but it's not what I was expecting from the amazing premise, and it's not one I'd either reread or recommend.
Final Rating: 3/5.
Thanks so much for reading guys! Have a great rest of your day :)
This is not a sponsored post. All thoughts and opinions are my own. The photo does not belong to me, and all rights to the respective owners.
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