Review: Review for Open Minds by Susan Kaye Quinn
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 30, 2014
Open Minds is unique. It's set in the future when the water supply has been so contaminated it has bred a new group of people, mind readers. At first, it was a few people and they were rounded up in camps and experimented on, but soon when the source of this phenomenon was discovered, everyone eventually had the power by the time they reached a certain age. Everyone but the zeros. The ones who never got the ability to read minds and had to talk instead of read everyone's mind.Kira is a zero. Her family is still holding out hope that she'll change, that she's a late bloomer. Her best friend Raf, who she is secretly crushing on, is holding on to the hope. But Kira feels it. It's not going to happen. Even the school teachers teach by mind reading. They just think their lessons which makes things difficult if you can't read minds. Kira is forced to wear a hearing aid and her teachers wear tiny microphones. But among her peers, she is the lowest of lows. Except with Raf, he doesn't discard her because she can't mind read. He talks to her at school so that she doesn't have to live through a silent hell.One of the first things I liked about this book was the family relationship. Though Kira didn't share things with her mother, she loved her mother and father a lot and her mother hopped right on it when Kira said she wanted a hearing aid. And her brother Seamus, though he was at her school last year to protect her, this year the forbidding Seamus is at West Point. But it doesn't stop him from protecting her and telling her who she should stay away from and what things mean because apparently touching from mind readers means something totally different than touching fromzeros. I loved the family connections. However, Kira gets mixed up with the wrong guy who teaches her she has a different ability altogether and she starts to lie to her family and keep secrets.It happens innocently enough, Kira accidentally trips over Simon's backpack and suddenly he wants to talk to her alone. One of the popular kids wants to talk to her? She finds out she can control the minds of others. And not only control them, but keep others out of her mind. She's super special in the mind jacker world.I have to say, I didn't really like Kira at times. And I think I didn't like her because all of the lies she told made everything worse. Had she just told her parents, well, there wouldn't be a novel. Because I liked her until she started hanging with Simon. The novel becomes plot driven from there and though you know, okay, she has to do this, you have no idea how she's going to do it. And you don't know if she's going to be successful. The author isn't afraid of having Kira fail at her attempts to change things for the better so don't be too sure you know what's going to happen.I think I jumped on Team Kira when she stopped thinking solely about herself and how to help herself and started thinking about all mind jackers. She'd had a Great grandfather that had been in one of the first mind reader camps. She remembered her grandmother talking about him. It affected her greatly. When Kira started thinking more globally we'll say instead of about Kira, she became more interesting and likable. She grew as a character and was infinitely more like a heroine than a zero. That's when she became a super heroine!Her family was a constant. They were like a lighthouse in the distance for her. They were hope.And I have to say, in her situation, I'd have wimped out big time. I'd have given up and crawled in a corner and probably be dead. But she just kept going. That's why she redeemed herself to me.Of course the baddies were the government, but I'm not sure it was a government sanctioned operation or a one man vendetta. We get one clue as to the drive of the man operating the vendetta and I think it will be explained a lot more in the next two books. But it's pretty clear in my mind what happened.There is a lot of action and I did have a hard time at first understanding the mind reading, mind jacking world. But it's very clear after you keep reading. Given the two powers, I'd love to be able to mindjack someone!This was a great new I think I'll go with sci-fi book. I think older MG and any YA reader would enjoy this novel. I only say older MG because they need to be able to understand the mind reading/mind jacking world. I commend the author for the family relationship she portrayed and how much it influenced Kira. There's not a lot of that in the books I read and I was glad to see it, especially Seamus and Kira. I hope we get to see a lot more of Seamus.I highly recommend this novel for MG/YA lovers. You don't have to like Sci-fi or Dystopians or whatever you want to classify this book as to enjoy this novel. It's fast paced, plot driven and has the best weapons, your mind!