I enjoyed this book, but it's not a tale that's "heavy" in any way.  The writing's not great, but even so, I read it all the way through and wouldn't characterize it as a waste of time at all.  Give it a try.

When I first started SCHOOL FOR PSYCHICS, I wanted to compare it to Lev Grossman’s THE MAGICIANS, but I’ve changed my mind. They both feature new adults who are sent back to school to learn to master their talents, but the characters in SCHOOL FOR PSYCHICS are way more likeable and realistic, and the school year structure is both satisfying and builds up to the next book.

The main character, Teddy, isn’t easy to like at first. She can read people, know when they’re bluffing, but with her powers wavering unpredictably, she’s gotten herself in serious trouble with a Vegas mob boss. She is nearly blackmailed into going to the school.

The school itself is mysterious, the teachers are harsh and the cliques brutally separated. I did enjoy that the cliques had to blend by the end, both because the teachers assigned groups but because the stakes were that high.

The woo-woo aspects of the characters’ psychic powers was kept at bay by the science and training classes the students attended. It was a great blend between mysticism and FBI procedure.

With conspiracies all around her, Teddy is never sure who to trust; her teachers, her fellow students, the mysterious stranger who promises to tell her the truth about her parents… All have their good points and manage to keep the mystery going throughout the book. Even though the book felt a bit more like a YA novel than I would have liked, I’m already looking forward to the second book.

This was a pretty fun read! It really reminded me of the show Quantico with a paranormal psychic side. The story was a little all over the place but it was pretty intriguing for the first book in a series and I'm definitely looking forward to reading the rest.

Theodora "Teddy'' Cannon is an intelligent, strong and spirited woman, but sometimes her personality just leads her down the wrong path. But really, if you can read people....really read people....see when they are lying, bluffing, etc....why not use that talent to win at gambling? Teddy doesn't care that every casino in Vegas has banned her. She just puts on a disguise, and goes anyway. She owes money to some dangerous people and then took money from her parents to help pay that loan....she has to win. Without getting noticed. But she does get noticed. Not by security. But by a representative of a school. Turns out, Teddy isn't just talented at reading people. She's psychic. The Whitfield School trains psychics for law enforcement and military programs. It's a tough place where everyone has to earn their spot. When students start disappearing, Teddy learns there is more going on behind the scenes at Whitfield than most realize. Can she and her misfit friends figure out exactly what's going on? 

This was such a fun book to read! The plot is creative and entertaining. The story had me hooked quickly. Teddy makes some bad decisions, but I still really like her as a main character. She has flaws, but she's loyal to her friends. Whitfield has a lot of secrets, and Teddy is determined to find them out.  This book is a great start to a series! I can't wait to find out what happens next! I will definitely be reading the next book when it comes out!

**I voluntarily read an advance readers copy of this book from Simon & Schuster via NetGalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.**

Teddy Cannon doesn't know why she is so good at being able to tell what someone's has for cards in poker. She doesn't realize she's psychic. She's been kicked out of college and has had several run ins with the law. Then, one night in Vegas she meets someone who tells her about her psychic ability and offers to help her wipe her slate clean (including paying her adopted parent's retirement plan back) if she comes to a school for people with special abilities like hers. She meets several other people her age and begins to make friends. Then, she starts finding out bits of information about her birth parents. Her desire to find out more about them puts her friends at risk. I enjoyed this book. It was one of the books that I didn't want to stop reading at night. I would look at the clock and it would be 3 in the morning and I still would think I could read just a few more pages. I can't wait for the rest of the books in the series to come out!

We follow a snarky millennial protagonist with a gambling problem as she learns to use her psychic abilities (it's why she's so good at poker) at a secret government school in San Francisco. The protagonist has a lot of baggage to work through, but she does good job of growing as a person as well as learning how to open herself up emotionally. It's fun to be inside her head throughout the story.

The plot clips right along, with fairly straightforward prose and no particularly surprising twists. The "big twist" was telegraphed from so early in the story I still haven't decided whether it was a little clumsy or it was meant to be another way to show that Teddy has been trusting people more than she ever used to. 

The underlying conflict revolves around a pretty interesting discussion about morality and safety, which I liked, and I'm looking forward to seeing that theme explored more thoroughly in the sequel. 

Folks who enjoy The Magicians should definitely pick this up. It's great for anyone looking for magic school stories, for urban fantasy that isn't explicitly about solving mysteries, and for really solid depictions of young people with complex friendships.

Were this a YA title I probably would have loved it. As it's an Adult title, I wasn't as impressed. I didn't like Teddy at all and felt she acted much younger than her age. While the powers were cool, it didn't change my opinion of the main character.

Harry Potter went to a special school for wizards where he learned to control his powers. Teddy Cannon is going to a school where she is learning to control and use her psychic abilities.

When the story begins, Teddy has been banned from every poker table in Las Vegas. She has disguised herself and is sneaking into one. A lot of money is needed, and it is needed fast.

Even though her winning streaks are almost unstoppable because she somehow knows the cards the other players are holding and knows what they are thinking, it never enters her mind that she could be a psychic. But a good-looking man is keeping his eye on her. Her nervousness messes things up, and she tries to flee. This man stops her, clues her into the fact that she is a psychic, and invites her to attend the Whitfield Institute, a school for psychics.

She is told that at this school she will learn to not only control her psychic abilities, but she will be taught how to better them and use them for the greater good.

She does learn at this school, but she also senses that something isn’t quite right. And that something puts her life and the life of those around her in danger. Something is crooked at the Whitfield Institute.

Did I enjoy this book? Yes. I enjoyed it immensely. Filled with mystery, romance, betrayal, and possible government secrets, this book with all its twists and turns keep you guessing what is going to happen next.

Did the book remind me of the Harry Potter series? Just a little. I guess a special school for psychics could be compared to a school for wizards. And something crooked is going on at Whitfield Institute just as something bad was going on at Harry Potter’s school.

The book is filled with mystery, romance, betrayal, and possible government secrets. If Teddy learns nothing else at this school, she learns what it is to be a true friend.

I was sent a copy of School for Psychics: Book One by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I’m looking forward to the release of the next book in this series.

or maybe 3.5 stars. A quick, fun, and easy read. Reminded me of X-Men: young adults going to a special school to learn how to use their unusual talents. The main plot was good--sufficiently complicated and largely plausible, for an urban fantasy, that is. The characters were interesting in that some started likeable and others unlikeable but by the end, my feelings on some of them had changed. I like that in a book! I didn't give it more stars because, while it's about young adults, it seemed pretty high-schooly in places. Also, the characters were often shallow and their motivations not developed very well. But, like I said, it was fun!

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me a free e-ARC of this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon Schuster for providing me with a free advanced copy of The School for Psychics in exchange for an honest review.

This is a paranormal book about Teddy Cannon, a Sanford drop out gambling addicted young woman who never knew her birth parents. A lot of this story walks side by side with Harry Potter and I found it difficult not to think of Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone several times throughout this book.

Both are raised by parents who are not theirs under the impression that their birth parents died in car accidents, both Harry and Teddy were collected to go to boarding school by someone in the field, whisked away to learn about their true powers. Neither Teddy nor Harry are particularly gifted an have to rely on friends to for backup.

Teddy is a lot less likable than Harry though and for several reasons. Firstly she's a grown adult that acts like a child. At least Harry had the fact that he was eleven keeping him from harsher judgments on his choice of actions.  She's careless and she squanders opportunities.  She's a shit to her friends.  The only thing redeeming about Teddy Cannon is that she makes the right decision in the end.  And Teddy is just the main characters, let alone mentioning all the other characters that were either one dimensional or unlikeable or both.

School for Psychics is a fast-paced government conspiracy theory book wasn't the worst fictional story I've ever read but it certainly wasn't the best, either. This is an okay introduction to what I believe will be a series of books in the Whitfield Institute universe but I will not be reading the next.

School for Psychics has a lot of promise. You can tell right away that it's being set up for a series as the author takes their time building the character of Teddy and her world. It make the book have a bit of a slow start, but once she gets to Angel Island and her new school the action starts to pick up. I also loved the relationship between Teddy and her misfits, as well as some of the other characters we meet through her at the school.  The friendships built really are the core of the story. There is a good deal of scientific information about psychic ability and theory so the book does give you a bit more depth than the typical new adult novel. The ending felt a bit abrupt and I know the cliffhanger is setting up the next book, but there were a lot of things going on in the last 10 pages that felt thrown at the reader. It left me feeling dissatisfied and I would have liked a bit more information in the reveal to get me excited about the next novel. All in all, School for Psychics was a fun read and I would continue with the series. The characters K.C. Archer created are definitely ones I'd like to spend more time with and I hope the series builds on the character's friendships and chemistry.

Like all books of this genre, I'm always the most intrigued by the powers and abilities of the characters.  While I did find most of the character's abilities cool, I did feel like they all had similar abilities.  Except for Pyro, Jillian and obviously Teddy, I wish there was more diversity in the types of gifts the characters had.  (Of course, this could all change in the sequels.)

Overall, this book had the normal "beginning of a series" feel.  It introduced the characters, introduced the setting, and introduced the main conflict and mystery that is usual in first books.  While there was nothing groundbreaking for me, it was still enjoyable and easy to read.  And I will be looking out for the next book.

I was very much intrigued by the blurb. Special abilities, psychic, and a school for such people was more than enough to attract a person like me, who is a die hard Potterhead.
Unfortunately, the book couldn’t cater to my interests and I was very much disappointed with the characters, especially the protagonist.
Teddy is supposed to be an adult, but the narration gave me a feeling of reading pure YA with a protagonist who is in her teen with raging hormones. I was clearly taken aback with Teddy’s character. I had high hopes on Nick and Clint, but in due course I lost interest on them too.
I did like the parts where the author has explained how psychic brains work in terms of science, but that was not enough to keep me hooked.
The narration felt dragging now and then, and the biggest turn off was Teddy sounding like an immature kid who has a special gift in hands and has no clue on its importance.
Its sad that I couldn’t like it as much as I wanted to.
The book could have done better with deep characters and some twists in the plot.

I opened this book thinking the title gave it away and it would be kind of silly and young, but I was so glad I was wrong! It turned into an exciting story about the normal world with a little twist of being psychic.  There were secrets, romance, lies, more lies, and tons of danger.  I loved the deception and story lines and could not put it down.

Good book with some weak points but overall good story and characterization.  I'm not sure I want to read a sequel if there is one, but it was a fun read and great escapist fare.

This was such a fun book! I would have loved to had a bit more depth to it, but hopefully, that will come along with the continuation of the series. I loved the powers that the students possessed and it gave me major X-Men vibes! Loved it!

I struggled a bit with this one. I quite liked the concept, but the lengths the author goes to in order to keep full grown adults from knowing what's going on in the world around them felt contrived.  Isolation on an island where they can sneak out is just ridiculous. Additionally, many of the characters seemed cardboard, more like a list of bullet points than a fleshed out person.  By about 50% I was uninterested in finishing. I don't have an desire to read another by the author.

This was a difficult one for me. A twenty something woman discovers that she has special powers and trots off to a school for psychics where she can hone her gift.  I was expecting some parallels with other fantasy stories where gifted individuals and magical schools are involved but I hoped this would be a bit more adult with some new ideas.  I was a bit disappointed.  Although there are some 'adult' situations in this book it still read like YA to me. It's not a bad story and it is a quick read.  Not sure I will continue with the series though.

"Teddy Cannon is a really dumb name." That's my first note on K.C. Archer's School for Psychics. I know, it's not the wittiest or most astute observation, but it would prove to be the narrative thread of the next 368 pages. Of all the issues I had with this book, the most egregious isn't even Archer's fault--it's that of the blasphemer who had the audacity to refer to this as "Harry Potter, but for psychics" in the book description. Then again, that was enough to get me to invest hours of my life, so who's the real fool here?

 School for Psychics centers on Teddy, a 24 year old millennial stereotype and orphan (√) with a penchant for "timely" references, geriatric idioms, and cringe worthy gambling metaphors. Teddy, who dropped out of Stanford and has trouble with authority (√√)  is on the run from a Russian loan shark to whom she owes $270,000 of her adoptive parents' money. Just when she's made peace with her cement-boots fate, she is recruited to attend Whitfield Institute, a secret school that will hone her and others' psychic abilities to be used for homeland security upon graduation. And with that, we enroll in what's ostensibly grad school, but more like a high school.

There, Teddy meets a menagerie of caricatu--er, I mean characters, like her roomie, gregarious Jillian, who can commune with animals, Molly, an empath computer hacker with a dark secret, Jeremy, Molly's khaki-flavored psychometrist boyfriend, death warning receiver Dara, and last but not least, Pyro (X-Men alias Lucas), the former cop bad boy with a heart of gold and a fireball in his pocket. These crazy "kids" make up the Misfits and are in direct competition with the other six "normal" students, the Alphas. It's all obstacle courses and telepathy lessons until students start to go missing and Teddy begins to suspect there's more to her origin story than meets the eye.   

This is where I’ll leave the remainder of the story to the author and share the Good and the Bad of School for Psychics

The Good:

-It was a quick read: 
While it may not have been well-written, it was easy to get through. The pace of the plot moved swiftly and there wasn't a ton of filler. 

-The story has potential: 
In better hands, this story could have gone far. If the school itself had been better developed *cough*Hogwarts*cough*, it would have provided a better foundation. Once the "real" central plot kicked in, I found myself exponentially more engaged than I had been, and I noticed the sins of the early writing were steadily decreasing. If the book was longer or if the fat was trimmed from the earlier chapters, this plot would have had more space to breathe and develop properly.

The Bad:

-The characters' ages:
The only reason I can see for making them all in their mid-twenties is to avoid the Harry Potter/Hunger Game/Divergent/Twilight fatigue of high school aged characters and to differentiate itself by being about adults, but not "grownups." This failed miserably. Every time their age was mentioned I found myself shocked because the characters were all so immature and behaved as though they never spent a day in the real world.

-Teddy's libido:
This kind of piggybacks on the above complaint, but this was so vexing that it deserved its own moment in the sun. Teddy's constant musings regarding every attractive male she lays eyes on and the way in which she expresses these thoughts had me thisclose to putting the book down for good. 

"'See you by the pool,' she said...she actually wouldn't mind seeing him by the pool. All that muscle and maybe a pair of tiny European swim trunks. It's been a long time, okay?"

"...she spotted a hot guy slouched in the corner...Teddy wondered about the talents of the hot guy."

"She was going to need an extracurricular activity to let off steam...she saw the hot guy smirk."

"Teddy looked over to see the hot guy slouch down in the seat next to hers...he looked like the kind of guy who'd enjoy breaking the rules."

"It took her another second before she put it together: Jillian Blustein wanted to get laid."

"She couldn't help but stare as he walked away...and damn, the view was fine."

"...he had the ass of a minor Greek god."

If it took a lot to get through those quotes in this review, imagine wading through that muck in a book.

-The writing in general:
This book was poorly written, there's no way around that. The pop culture references to Ryan Gosling dreams, Taylor Swift and Katie Perry's feud, a Long Island Medium Halloween costume (I live on Long Island and even I thought this was a wee bit esoteric) already feel dated. The non-stop poker clichés about going all in, knowing when to fold, bluffing, reading the table, etc...were so painful and forced. And in stark contrast to all this immaturity, were bits of dialogue that sounded like they were written in a retirement home:

"...the pain was nothing compared to her desire to take him out--not for a grain bowl, but for a knuckle sandwich."

-Teddy's a poor man's Jessica Jones:
This was a pretty minor irritation, all other things considered, but I think Archer was watching a little too much Netflix when she crafted this sarcastic loner who drowns her sorrows in booze and boys and proudly rocks a uniform of "badass" boots and a leather jacket.   

TL;DR: While the concept of School for Psychics and the developing series' arch have potential, the laughable writing, cardboard characters, and weak protagonist overshadow any sliver of hope. I don't need to be psychic to know I'm not going to continue this series.

I can't seem to get the review to post I've tried typing it and reposting it but it keeps telling me it can't go.