I enjoyed this novel about a young woman who is struggling to find her way and ends up as a recruit to a government sponsored school for psychics on Angel Island. It was an interesting read. It's the first book of a series. I'd like to see better character development. It wasn't always easy to find the motivation for some of the students decisions. Part of this is because there is a lot left to be discovered, that I assume will be revealed in future volumes, but it did make the reading feel a bit disjointed at times.

Nothing out of the ordinary, another book about a school for special kids, the usual drama...easy to read but I would not buy it or recommend it

Theodora (Teddy for short) Cannon. She is a Stanford dropout, a gambling addict who owes a quarter of a million dollars to a Russian Loan Shark. She lives in her parents’ garage. She has failed so many times at so many things. She is about to be a student at the Whitfield Institute for Law Enforcement Training and Development and failure is not an option this time even though she has no idea what she is doing.

So here we are contemplating:
Astral telepathy and telekinesis. – Possible
A government school for training those with these attributes – assuredly
Double dealing and dirty tricks – what would the world and this book be without them?
Smarmy undefined sexual encounters – confusing and unnecessary but happening anyway.

The book moved along and made sense, sort of. Additional character development, backstory and insight would have been helpful and made this a more coherent story. Perhaps things will be fleshed out in the books to follow.

Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for an ARC

Not quite what I expected.... not that that’s necessarily bad? The writing to have a YA , drama-filled “OMG!” vibe to it at times but also drew me in. Would definitely read the next in the series, if just for the next show to drop.
Thanks to netgaley & simon & schuster for this arc!

I actually requested this on a whim. It's a great, fun treat with a bit of drama, mystery, legalese, and psychics, all rolled together. Delighted to see that it's going to be a series, even if I do hate waiting for the next book in situations like these.

In this YA paranormal romance, Teddy is still living in her parent's garage, having been kicked out of college and is in trouble for gambling. When she is caught in a casino that she has been banned from, she is given the choice of going to a school for psychics. She falls in with a group of misfits and learns how to use her own psychic ability that she had not known that she even had. Mystery, intrigue and romance abound in this first book in a new series. I think that fans of Twilight and Harry Potter will enjoy it.

School for psychics? Sign me up! First in a series. Fun, romp of a book with nice set up for the school and then nice transition into the primary thriller-like adventure. Read straight through. Recommended.

I loved this book. It exceeded my expectations in the best way. I was constantly surprised by all the twists and turns. What a great launchpad for a new series!

This book was definitely fun! I was interested in this since I heard it was a mix of Harry Potter and Percy Jackson like tropes. I was not disappointed either. This book kept me captivated form page one and I found it flawless and the writing brilliant! 5 stars from me.

2.5 stars

In many ways, this story is much like the gazillion YA books in which teens discover they have some super-special abilities and are recruited to attend a secret school. Cue in misfits vs. popular/mean kids, a bit of potential romance, some secret goings-on, etc. The School for Psychics is for a bit older crowd (so the drinking and sex aren’t quite as taboo) but the dynamics are similar for much of the book.

I liked Teddy for the most part and the premise has potential, but it was limited by a number of inconsistencies and things that made no sense. <spoiler>One small example: Bringing all the school candidates to campus before weeding most out with a simple test to confirm their psychic abilities added drama but it would have made more sense to do this weeding out before bringing them to the super-secret location.</spoiler> I also became frustrated many times with Teddy for ignoring the obvious. <spoiler>How in the world could she trust Jeremy with her secret about wanting the FBI file when he obviously conspired against her in the test and openly espoused the “ends justify the means” attitude of her probable enemies? Why also did she not question Clint after he told her that her mom had left her in his care? He obviously must have been involved with her adoption, knew exactly who and what she was from the start, and probably arranged for her problems with Sergei to more easily fall into his scheme of getting her to the school. For that matter, why the ruse at all? Why did he not simply approach her and tell her at least part of the truth from the start?</spoiler>

Despite the story’s shortcomings, I had no trouble reading to the end and it was a mostly enjoyable diversion. But it wasn’t enjoyable enough to induce me to read the next book in the series.

I love the premise of this book. A school for young psychics with the elements of romance and action. I couldn’t wait to start reading this. I wasn’t disappointed in this light hearted story told from the perspective of Teddy who is also searching for her parents. Definitely a good read.

Teddy Cannon grew up thinking she had epilepsy and was shocked to find out she didn’t but was psychic. It explained why the epilepsy medicine didn’t seem to work.
She was a poker playing gambler who had been banned from every casino on the strip in Vegas. Bad news for someone who needs money and owes the mob a lot of it. One night she puts on a disguise and goes gambling. She is winning until all of a sudden her mojo changes. The casino pit bosses recognize her. She takes off and gets stopped by someone who promises to help her. He is the one who reveals she is psychic and offers a chance to do good for the world and in return have her debts paid off.
Off she goes to a government run school for psychics where she and others learn to hone their craft and do good.
Any twists and turns happen while Teddy finds out about her childhood and her life that she never knew about.

So good you can't put it down, A School for Psychics is full of action and people with cool abilities. What you find out as you read it is that it has a wonderfully written sense of humor about it too. I got so into the story I forgot I was reading on my kindle and reached up to turn the page!! I cannot wait to read the rest of the series.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Teddy is a 24-year-old woman from Vegas who has a natural affinity for gambling. She can always tell when someone is fibbing. One night she is dressed in disguise in order to earn back money she owes a mobster but has a run in with police. Someone comes to her rescue, claiming to be a recruiter of a school for psychics. In exchange for enrolling, Teddy will have her debts erased, so she agrees to go.

I think the most enticing thing about this book is the fact that it has a 24 year old woman who finds out that she has psychic abilities and is then sent to a school for psychics to develop her skills. If I switch 24 to 11, woman to boy, and psychic to wizard, we get the premise to Harry Potter. Most of the generation that grew up with Harry Potter (including myself) is in their 20s to early 30s at this point and wish to get that feeling again with a main character whose age is much closer to ours. It’s helping us naturally connect to those characters while getting to go to a school to learn about preternatural abilities. However, the author’s execution of this is quite juvenile. With characters in their 20s I would hope to have a cast who behave as though they are in graduate school. People who are serious about the opportunity to study something new and engage with it in creative and intelligent ways. Instead it felt like a bunch of kids in high school with gossip, partying, and drama. Our class of first years is even divided up into a group of students with extraordinary abilities, the Alphas, and a group of the not-so-extraordinary, the Misfits. The school pits the Alphas against the Misfits in competition which just makes it feel like the popular jocks versus the loser club. There’s even a class that involves running through obstacle courses making it seem like the jocks versus the nerds in high school gym class.

Additionally, our main character Teddy finds herself choosing between two hot guys. We just needed a love triangle to further set our lovely YA tone. Both of these two hot guys main characteristics are that they are hot and sexy. One even has the physic ability of pyrokinesis just to show you how hot he really is!

The writing style is quite simple. Many sentences are short and things move rather quickly. The entire novel takes place over a year and the author has very large time skips to accomplish this. It doesn’t allow or show much development for the characters in between events and it causes some relationships to seem rushed or less genuine. Again, I think the aim was to pull in Harry Potter readers with each book being a year in school.

Some bright points of the book include all of the different psychic abilities the author managed to pull together. An average reader will think of a psychic as either being able to read minds and/or see the future, and while those exist in this novel, there are still more to be explored and taught in coursework. I especially liked it when we get some of the details in class as to how these abilities work. Some physics have only one ability and others have more. No one is a “special snowflake” who can do everything, and leaves more to be explored and learned in later books.

I think this book is a good book for readers who enjoy simple and fast-paced plots. I definitely liked the first half better as the author developed the setting, but the latter half gets into a mysterious government conspiracy-type plot, which I just felt was silly. It makes some sense in that most psychics work for the government, but I wanted to see a little bit more originality.

Cute. The book is cute. It reminds me of something my daughter would have read when she was younger, wanting the next in the series

I really enjoyed this book and look forward to the next book in the series.

Teddy Cannon is a misfit - a gambler in debt up to her eyeballs with a mobster who is going to make her pay; she's smart and resourceful - but a bit adrift after being expelled from Stanford. Teddy is also a powerhouse poker player because she has the uncanny ability to read when people are lying to her - a talent that has had her banned from every casino in Las Vegas.

When she loses it all in a high stakes poker game and both casino security and the mobster she owes money to are on her heels, Teddy is bailed out by Clint Corbett, a mysterious former football player and LVPD detective, and is offered the chance to attend Whitfield Institute - a school that trains gifted students to be law enforcement and national security personnel. Because as Clint explains to her - Teddy doesn't just have great instincts about people, she's actually psychic.

The next thing Teddy knows, she's boarding a flight to San Francisco and living on an island in the Bay, training to become a government agent and honing her psychic skills. But when students begin mysteriously disappearing and Teddy's psychic abilities give her flashes of insight about secrets being kept about an accident with another group of government trained psychics, Teddy has to decide whether to risk her spot at Whitfield to dig deeper - and whether to trust her fellow trainees to help.

School for Psychics is the first book in a fun new series that combines a heroine with paranormal gifts, a mysterious school for government operatives, a possible conspiracy, and criminal investigations. The result is a fun, intriguing, and quick read that will have you itching to read the next book in the series.

The main character here, Teddy, is trying hard to overcome her tendency to make poor life choices, but frankly, she sucks at it; she still does things like drinking heavily the night before a vital exam. That's a long way from being my favourite kind of character, which lost the book some points - not quite enough to take it down to three stars, though.

The premise of a school to train people with psychic powers to work with the military and law enforcement was an interesting one, and well handled. The Outcasts vs Alphas division of the students struck me as a bit YA, but it didn't descend into total cliche, and there was at least one alliance formed across those lines.

The plot was competently laid out, and the characters hit their marks in it and showed some progression beyond being stereotypes. Overall, a decent job, but not the kind of main character I want to follow into a sequel.

I received a copy from Netgalley for review.

I inhaled this book, ignoring chores and work.

Stories about psychics that are written in first person sardonic are almost always going to draw me in, especially if the main character is a mess trying to be a better person, and so it is with 24-year-old Teddy Cannon, who we begin with in her hometown Las Vegas. She's dressed in a fat suit, as she has been blackballed from all the casinos, but she desperately needs money as she owes a quarter million to a loan shark. But she gets made by . . . a recruiter for a school for psychics.

Go to the school and have her debts cancelled and her parents' retirement fund restored, or be left on her own to deal with it? Gee, tough choice. Not. Except that it is for Teddy--which shows how serious are her trust issues, in spite of truly awesome adoptive parents. (the word adoptive is there for a reason.)

Teddy has always been able to sense when people lie, which contributes to those trust issues. But she takes the offer, and goes to the school, which is located on an island in San Francisco Bay. She expects at any time to be booted out, which extends to her extra helping of attitude. She likes to hook up with hot guys, but wants no part of relationships; she has a tough time making friends, she doesn't trust the instructors as far as she can spit into a wind.

She not only has to learn all the nifty stuff taught at the school, she has to learn to have friends, and how to trust your team--which, for her, is harder than the killer obstacle courses, grueling forensics classes, and so forth.

Then things start getting odd.

Okay, I usually roll my eyes at psychic schools that are related to Sekrit and Evil Government Labs. I also roll my eyes at love triangles. But Archer sold me on the government aspect of this story because it, like the psychic abilities, made sense. Archer draws from human nature in building the history of the government stuff. Equally, I liked the way that Archer drew on our own human senses in developing the psychic talents.

I really liked the way Archer develops the characters. Kate and Jillian were my favorites. There are plenty of hot guys, and though Teddy is drawn to two, her own issues get in the way of the usual Angsty Love Triangle road I've seen in too many novels, especially YAs.

I don't know that I'd call this YA. It feels like one, though the characters are in their twenties. They are in school, with stringent rules. There are adult relationships, though not on page. There is adult language.

I would have loved it as a teen, and I thoroughly enjoyed it as an old bat. In fact, I want the next one NOW.

Thank you to NetGalley for the free digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I rather enjoyed this book and was able to read it in one sitting. The characters were very enjoyable and fun to read.

Teddy is able to read people - and does a wonderful job at the casinos. Unfortunately, she is now banned from all of them.

Going undercover to help pay off her debt to a mobster, she gets caught, and is offered a chance to go to school to fine tune her abilities.

The catch? She will be working with the government.

it took me eleven days to finish this book because i was just completely bored out of my mind.

there’s nothing particularly wrong with it – i just didn’t click with anything: the writing, the characters, the plot, none of that made me excited enough to want to pick this book up after i set it down. and i guess i’m in a slump now because forcing yourself to read mediocre books when you don’t want to is the worst.

first things first, the plot.

teddy cannon is a 20 something gambling addict from vegas. when we first meet her, she’s been expelled from stanford and is in a casino trying to make some money tô pay off a huge debt to a russian mob. and she fails, big time.

she’s desperately searching for a way out of the casino without being recognized by the very strong, very mean dudes who are looking for her when a guy comes seemingly out of nowhere and saves her by hypnotizing them – or something – and making them forget about her.

then he tells her she’s a psychic. and she has a place in a psychic school the FBI is running.

so, that’s a pretty interesting base plot for me, right there. i love the kind of books that take one fantastic or supernatural element and throw them into a contemporary setting. so a psychic college? i was sold.

unfortunately, neither the writing or the character development did anything to hold my interest in this story. i’ll just have to come right out and say it: this writing was bad.

the entire book was written in very short sentences comprising very long paragraphs. the author apparently didn’t know that commas were a thing and you can actuslly write a sentence made of more than five words – and you don’t have to state the character’s name at the beggining of every. single. new. sentence. it felt choppy and every time i realized she was doing it again, it would take me right out of the story because i was too annoyed at the style. and there was absolutely no atmosphere set throughout the entire book; it just felt like i was reading a very dry op-ed piece.

also, this author commited what i consider to be the #1 crime in writing: unexplained time jumps. this book takes place during a whole year. instead of describing what happened during that time, she’d talk about things that happened over the course of a few days and then jump to months and months ahead, and just expect you to go along with it. when you tell me teddy gets a new roommate, shows them exchanging a few words and in the next paragraph you talk about how they’re such good friends now, i’m not going to believe you just because – i want to see that relationship being developed, otherwise i’ll be very skeptical about the whole thing.

tying right into that, the characters and the character development were awful. although the 3rd person narrator was constantly telling me what teddy was supposedly like, it never showed. so although i know what teddy was supposed to be like, i don’t really believe it because she never acted accordingly. the same goes for the rest of the secondary characters, and those were even worse, because they were barely featured, unless it was in a way to serve the plot, so there were no organic connections between any of them.

and also everyone was just so fucking juvenile. newsflash: you’re in college, not in a gossip girl-esque high school setting. all of these twenty somethings ran around the whole time acting like teenagers. if i wanted to read a high school contemporary, i would’ve picked up one.

i’m giving this two instead of just one star because i reserve my one star ratings for book that actively make me angry, and this one didn’t make me feel anything at all. it was completely lackluster.