The School for Psychics by K.C. Archer

First book in the School for Psychics series

1.75 stars

This novel follows Teddy Cannon, a misfit gambler who has been banned from the casinos on the Las Vegas Strip. She can’t kick the habit especially because she owes thousands to a dangerous man threatening her adoptive parents. Teddy has never been proven to be a cheater, but her ability to tell when people are lying has come in handy at the poker table. When Teddy is offered an opportunity to attend a school for psychics, Whitfield, that trains them to be operatives in government fields it seems to good to be true. The challenge Teddy faces is to pass her exams and not get kicked out of the school that can save her from destruction. I honestly didn’t know what to expect going into this novel. It seemed like a fun novel and who doesn’t want to read about a school of psychics? However, this book is bland and not at all what I was expecting. It’s racked full of clichés. Here is an example:
“Haven’t you wondered why you can do things other people can’t?”
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This feels so much like the famous scene in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone that I thought I was reading it for a second.
The dialogue in general within this novel is incredibly mediocre and unless I was told that this was an adult novel I wouldn’t have guessed that because the writing style seems juvenile and clunky. It’s also hard to buy that some of these characters are adults because the things they say are so cringey that I was getting second-hand embarrassment. Archer’s writing style can be very fast, but it can also be slow and I found that there was no good balance between the two. Either I was flying through the pages or forcing myself to carry on. Another problem I had was that there were so many major plot points being introduced past the 50% marker. When I’m reading a novel, I love to have new things introduced, but when new major plots are being added in without hugely impacting the story it becomes frustrating. For instance, there is a whole plot introduced in the spring semester of the story where the class has to solve whether a man killed his girlfriend or not. It was too much and it did nothing for this story. The ending I found to be the hardest to get through and stay entertained. I can’t really put my finger on it, but at a certain point I felt like the story was going nowhere particularly exciting and the plot was detrimental to the characters that I felt like I had to keep reading. I found myself getting a little bored at the climax of what was supposed to be a setup for the sequel.


Whimsical Writing Scale: 2

The main female character is Teddy. I am not a fan of Teddy at all. She is the epitome of a Mary Sue. I haven’t come across many of those lately and I was starting to think that writers were moving from this 2000s writing trope, but nope. Teddy’s power is a one-of-kind psychic ability that is just oh so rare and special. Also, Teddy is selfish. I haven’t read The Magicians by Lev Grossman, but I’ve heard all the characters are unlikable and it made me wonder if Archer was trying to capture this type of character in the similar setting that Grossman used. All I know is that even characters in the novel were calling her out for only going to people to get something to serve herself instead of genuinely caring about the people around her. In fact, I highlighted three quotes of people calling her out on this and did she change? Not really. She claimed she did, but I surely didn’t see that in her actions.


Kick-Butt Heroine Scale: 1

The Villain- I called it from the beginning of the missing blood vials. It was obvious and nobody saw it, which is completely baffling since these are all highly trained government specialists. I just don’t buy that the dean of the school didn’t see what was so stinking obvious and in everyone’s faces. Obviously, if this is the case the government is failing and everyone needs to be fired.


Villain Scale: 2

There is a wide cast of characters. The school is divided into Misfits and Alphas. Teddy and all her friends are misfits because they have never utilized their powers for success and have felt more like outcasts because of them. It makes sense that there would be two types of people who would utilize their powers, but none of the characters really stuck out to me. All of the characters were clichés of their ability. For instance, one of the characters that Teddy has a one-night stand with is a pyrokinetic and he is angsty and emo. Every pyrokinetic in film is angsty except for Charlie from Firestarter who was angry and vengeful and she was the best. Teddy’s roommate can also talk to animals and she is your stereotypical hippie who does yoga in the nude. Molly, an integral character, is a hacker and an empath. She exhibits all the usual hacker clichés, but it is amped up because of her inability to escape everyone else’s emotions. It’s hard to appreciate characters when they all represent an archetype and never expand past what the author presents to us. Then there is Clint, the dean of the school, and he feels like a younger Dumbledore and I just wasn’t buying him. Also, Teddy sleeping with her professor was just awkward and unnecessary.


Character Scale: 1.75

Overall, The School for Psychics had promise, but I wasn’t all that extremely impressed with it. I wish that I had enjoyed this novel more than I did, but this novel just wasn’t for me. I would, however, recommend it to fans of special schools that focuses more on the actual school.


Cover Thoughts: That giant blown up face in the middle of a pretty background ruins this cover for me.

Thank you, Netgalley and Simon & Schuster, for providing me with a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

This story was definitely original and entertaining. The problem I had with it was the pacing. It was a bit slow and a little redundant, Teddy kept repeating herself and I found that to be a little annoying and not really important to the plot. The biggest problem I had with this story was, it wasn't really a surprise who the "bad guys" were. I think there were some twists and I did appreciate that. I am intrigued to see what happens next but I am not going to be running out to buy it the day it's released.

Thank you Netgalley & Simon and Schuster for access to the eARC of this book!
School for Psychics is the first book in a new series from the enigmatic KC Archer. Our story begins as past mistakes are catching up with Teddy Cannon - as an alternative to paying the piper, she is recruited into a secret, government training program for those with Psychic abilities. Teddy has unique, powerful psychic abilities, and in learning to harness them she realizes that not everyone at the school is telling her the whole story. Action ensues.
This book has a fun premise, but some of the characters felt a little flat or underdeveloped. This is the first book in a series, so I'm excited to see if that development continues to occur. If you like a little magical realism with your police procedural, you'll probably enjoy this!

Adopted 20-something girl learns her epileptic fits and inability to fit in are really psychic traits best suited to elite training in government service. Her outsider status and repeated real-world failures find common ground among the other psychic recruits at the specialized training facility. The recruits break rules and test boundaries as they learn to harness their special talents. This tale will seem novel and exciting to younger readers early in their reading career. More seasoned readers may find the story a bit flat and trope-ish. This is the first in a planned series. I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and will definitely be looking for the next book in the series. I have a tendency to go for dark psychological thrillers and I usually have a hard time getting into other books but this was a perfect break from my dark side. It was light and easy to read. I like the main character Teddy and I'm excited to see where the next book takes her.

Sadly, this book just didn't work for me. I couldn't invest in the main character, Teddy, who seemed just slightly too self-satisfied. While I enjoy any kind of magical or supernatural school environment, overall this just didn't feel original enough for me to really get into it. If you're interested in that kind of supernatural school vibe, you may want to give this a try.

**Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the ARC with the understanding that any review provided will be my honest opinion of the book.**



The description of this book had me hooked but the story itself kept me hooked. Teddy, a woman in her 20s, is trying to win at least $200,000 at a card table in a Vegas casino when her life changes forever. She has always been different from others but she knew it wasn't because she was special. Teddy was wrong. She always thought of herself as a human lie detector but she is actually psychic. She gets an offer she can't refuse to attend The Whitefield School in exchange for clearing her debts with a pretty nasty loan shark. Teddy soon realizes that there are so many others that have special abilities like hers and for the first time in her life, she feels like she belongs.

This book was reminded me of the X-Men a bit and that works. I really liked reading this story and would absolutely read any more that were part of the series. It moves at a really good pace and I loved, loved, loved that the characters were NOT teenagers. The only reason I didn't give 5 stars is because I don't like the cover.

Take a group of twenty-something psychics at a sequestered school off the coast of San Francisco trying to learn how to control/master their special gifts for the greater good, add drama, irreverence, intrigue, conspiracy, and a little personal growth, and you end up with an entertaining, sometimes funny, stay-up-all-night read. I really enjoyed this. Can't wait for the next book in the series!

School for Psychics has an interesting premise...a school run by the federal government to assist psychics in honing their skills. The only reason to do that, of course, is to then place them in federal agencies, such as the FBI or CIA, where they can assist their fellow Gmen with their paranormal prowess. I found the main character difficult to like...a bit prickly and paranoid. While there were times in the middle of the book I wished the author would get on with it, the end wrapped up quite suddenly with a somewhat difficult to follow idea that leads directly into a second novel (or series). It was a quick, interesting read, but won't be on any "must read" shelves.

I enjoyed this story more than I thought I would. I was initially a little iffy from the synopsis but thought I would still give it a shot. Despite enjoying it for the most part, I just couldn't really connect with the characters. Hopefully any future books could improve upon the characters and the premise more.

It's nice to read a paranormal book that isn't targeted for Teens. Teddy has psychic abilities she just doesn't know it yet. Teddy lost her parents at a young age and had a difficult life, she always seems to sabotage herself, despite having great adoptive parents she just can't get her act together. But she does have a gift she calls her human lie detector. She uses it for gambling and gets herself in trouble with a loan shark and the law and after losing money she stole from her adoptive parents she finds out she can has psychic abilities and if she agrees to join a special law enforcement training team and go to school to strengthen her gift, the government will solve all her money problems and give her a fresh start. When Teddy goes to school she meets other students with different psychic abilities, they are split into two groups the alphas and the misfits (as they call themselves) People that can talk to animals, start fires, empaths, mind readers etc. She starts to accept her gift until she learns things aren't always what they seem. The death of her parents, and the motives of some of the students or teachers. Students start to go missing and dangerous things start happening and it's time for the students to band together and try to figure out what is going on and how to stop it.. I liked the book and the characters but I think there needs to be a bit more mystery, some of the clues dropped were pretty obvious and sometimes the science of it all got a bit intense But I look forward to seeing how the characters develop and Teddy's relationship with FBI agent Nick and finding a person that she thought was lost to her forever. I will keep reading this series. I see a lot of potential here. I was given this book in advance for my honest review.

School for Psychics reminds me of X-Men in that they teach people how to deal with and control their extraordinary capabilities. As with any power there are responsibilities and those who wish to corrupt and/or destroy said power.
I really enjoyed the character of Teddy. I wish more background material had been given about some of her friends, like Jillian and Dara. I liked how it had just enough action to keep it lively but didn't depend on that to fulfill the story. The moral dilemmas in the story are ones that plague everyone. The development of trust for Teddy was interesting because of who she trusted as the story moved on versus who she claimed to care about the most. It was also nice that while there was some romance but it didn't define the book or its characters.
I received a copy of this book and am voluntarily leaving this review.

2.5 stars. Theodora “Teddy” Cannon is hiding her short black hair and slight build under a long blonde wig, weighted underwear that adds thirty pounds, and cheap flashy clothing. It’s all in an effort to fool the security personnel and facial recognition software at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. There she plans to parlay her $5,000 bankroll (from selling her car) into enough money to pay back the $270,000 she owes to Sergei Zharkov, a vicious Vegas bookie, and her adoptive parents, who know Teddy has been living an aimless and trouble-strewn life but are unaware that she’s stolen $90,000 from their retirement account to make a partial payment to Zharkov. Teddy knows she has the talent to “read” other card players almost faultlessly ― it’s led to her being banned from all the casinos on the Strip ― and is confident that she can win big at Texas Hold ’Em if she isn’t spotted and kicked out. Her plan is working like a dream … until her talent suddenly abandons her in the middle of a crucial hand and she loses everything.

About that same time both Zharkov and the casino recognize Teddy ― apparently bad luck comes in threes ― and give chase. Teddy is mysteriously saved by a stranger, an NFL linebacker-sized man who springs several surprises on her: He knows who she is and how much money she owes, and to whom. Her ability to read other gamblers is actually a psychic ability. And he will pay back all her debts if she will come to the Whitfield Institute for Law Enforcement Training and Development, which is secretly a school for training psychically-gifted young adults.

Teddy is a rebel and a rule-breaker, but she’s smart enough to recognize a deal that shouldn’t be refused. A day and a plane and boat ride later, she’s at the Whitfield Institute on an island off the California coast, meeting other new students with a wide range of psychic gifts, from telepathy to animal-speaking to firestarting. So far so fun, but Teddy is also a loner with trust issues and has a hard time fitting in, especially when it becomes clear that she’s having difficulty getting a handle on her psychic gifts.

Stir in a hostile professor with a grudge against Teddy and the “Misfits” group she hangs out with, a couple of hot guys who are interested in Teddy, a conspiracy and a few mysteries, and you’ve got a breezy, fast-paced story that reads quickly. Unfortunately School for Psychics never really engaged me, for numerous reasons. The plot is somewhat choppy, occasionally skipping over periods of time or important events with a noticeable lack of subtlety or smoothness and glossing over elements that don’t really make sense (for example, how did Teddy manage to land herself almost $300,000 in debt when she had a near-infallible talent for gambling?). It’s also cliché-ridden, relying on over-familiar tropes like the misfits vs. the alphas and the main character who, initially at a daunting disadvantage talent-wise, develops ― surprise! ― an Extra-Special Super Cool Talent.

The characters are mostly one-dimensional and familiar types. Teddy, though more complex, isn’t particularly likable, though readers who appreciate rebellious and troubled protagonists may enjoy her more than I did. School for Psychics has a New Adult vibe (with no interest in a committed relationship, Teddy hops into bed with a couple of different guys) but the students at the Whitfield Institute act more like teenagers. It irritated me as a reader when Teddy and her friends made several poor decisions. In particular, there’s one mind-bogglingly bad decision toward the end that annoyed me so much that I couldn’t even make myself be interested in the details of how their caper went down. The far-fetched coincidences that enabled their scheme didn’t help. I skimmed through most of what was supposed to be a climactic scene, mentally rolling my eyes at the characters.

School for Psychics works reasonably well as the introduction for a new book series, if the concept interests you and if you don’t expect too much from it beyond set-up and character introduction. Reportedly the television rights to it have been purchased and the CW is now developing a drama based on this novel.

School for Psychics is the first in an eponymous series about a public-private venture in educating psychics for work in law enforcement and national defense. Teddy Cannon is a college dropout deeply in debt to her bookie and in order to get out from under, she’s stolen money from her parents’ retirement, planning to win big at The Bellagio. By big, I mean a quarter million bucks just to get back to zero. However, she’s confident she can succeed if she can just avoid detection. She’s permanently banned from the Strip because she is an uncanny gambler. They think she cheats. She thinks she’s just good at reading people.

However, her plans go awry, deliberately spiked by the Dean of the School for Psychics who used her dilemma to recruit her to the school. Not having much of a choice and perhaps hoping she can make something of herself, she agrees to attend, and there begins a whole new adventure, making friends, learning skills, and even learning about her birth parents who died in an accident when she was a child.



It’s a funny thing. In television, the pilot is often terrible with people spending far too much time explaining who they are in odd little monologues or awkward, never-gonna-happen dialogue. In books, the first in a series is often the best, rich in character development and without those silly meet-and-catch up gatherings that infect subsequent books. It’s a function of their media. The time from book to book is enough to make writers think we need a refresher or that we want to know what some character not featured in the current book is up to. I mention this because this book reads more like a pilot. There’s a lot of character introduction and somehow I think the next books in the series will be more exciting.

I like Teddy. I think the premise is promising and there are so many great elements for further stories, but this one, rooted in her first year of study was a bit too…studious, I guess. Archer makes the mistake of thinking there is some need to root the paranormal in science, so there’s quantum physics used to explain Neo and the bullets in The Matrix and neural-imaging and biology to explain psychic phenomenon. This is the stuff she is learning in class. I guess it’s my thinking that if you are going to gift characters with paranormal powers, then just do it. Maybe a sentence or two on origins, not long explanations of how this is scientifically feasible, especially when those particular explanations are questionable science.

Hopefully, her classes in her sophomore year will be more about her powers and less about trying to pretend this isn’t fantasy.

I received an e-galley of School for Psychics from the publisher through NetGalley.

School for Psychics at Simon & Schuster
K. C. Archer is a pseudonym. K.C. Archer at Goodreads.

I am fascinated by any book with "powers" featured in the plotline. Growing up, I loved the idea of harnessing a secret power just like Samantha from Bewitched! School for Psychics is about an elite, most secretive school on Angel Island helping psychics learn their respective gifts. The first book in a new series, this one left us on part of a cliffhanger, so that you are encouraged to pick up the next book to find out what happens next.

Teddy Cannon is our protagonist, she's discovered reading cards at a Poker table in a Vegas casino and we follow her as she comes to terms with her birth parents and their history, along with all her new friends at school. They all have different psychic abilities and it was super interesting to learn more about the differences. However, this book was a slog for me for about the first 2/3's of the book. I didn't want to pick it back up again, wasn't interested in the plot or the characters, frankly I was just bored. The last 1/3 I couldn't put down. It was a riveting race to the end and I had to know how it would end. Not sure yet if I'll pick up the next book in the series. I think there were just too many side characters that I had a hard time keeping them all straight.

This is from an advance review copy, for which I thank the publisher.

Not to be confused with The School for Psychics by Carolyn Jourdan, this School for Psychics is volume one is a series which seems to have as its aim to be an adult version of Harry Potter, but don't let that fool you. It's really a YA novel with non-YA characters, and this made for an inauthentic, if not laughable story. I did not like it. I didn't like the main character, which was the first problem I had with this. She started out fine, but went rapidly downhill.

24-year-old Teddy Cannon owes a lot of money (like low six figures) to a Serbian crook by the name of Sergei. Her plan is to use her psychic ability (which she doesn't know she has) to win big at poker and repay the loan. How she ever got into such debt when she can win so easily at poker is a mystery. Though she doesn't realize it, she's psychic and knows exactly what the other players have in their hands.

In her ignorance of her true calling, she puts this skill down to her ability to detect their 'tells' - little peccadilloes and mannerisms which reveal what they're holding in their hands. As it happens when we meet her on her big gamble, she fails and is contacted by a mysterious man who invites her to come to the school for Psychics on an island off the coast of California. If she does, he says, all her debts will be paid. Does that sound like entrapment? It did to me, but Teddy isn't smart enough to be the least bit suspicious of how all this magically came together. I wondered if she was set up for this right from the off, but if she had been, it really would have made no sense anyway.

I also have to wonder, since she's been specially recruited - having been watched for some time - why her recruiter waited so long, and if he's so sure about her, why she has to undergo these entrance tests. As another reviewer suggested, it would have been better to test potential recruits before they arrive at this secret school, not afterwards, but none of this is gone into in the novel. It speaks very poorly of the recruiters skills that so many new entrants were kicked out so quickly. Up to the point of Teddy's arrival at the school, the story wasn't too bad at all and it held my interest, but it went downhill quickly once school began. The author needed to think this through much more than she evidently did, is what it felt like to me. It simply wasn't realistic, even within its own framework.

Teddy thought she was epileptic. She had no idea she was psychic, although how that happened went unexplained in the 25% or so of this that I could stand to read. You would think that someone introduced to a whole new world as Teddy was, would revel in it, but she acted like she didn't care much about anything - she behaved as though it was simply another day in the life, which again felt inauthentic.

In the end, my biggest problem with this was that I wanted to read "School for Psychics" not a heated Harlequin romance, but that was what I got instead. I wanted to read about a main character who was strong and independent and who relished the chance to learn to use her abilities. I did not want to read about clichéd 'bitch in heat' who really had no great interest in anything save the "hot guy" she sees on the first day, and with whom she can't wait to have unsafe sex. I don't do covers because my blog is about writing, and author's have little control over their cover unless they self-publish, but this novel's cover was actually pretty cool. Unfortunately it was wrong for the book, which ought to have had the stereotypical naked, shaven-chested guy on the front cover, standing behind a swooning Teddy.

So it's not really about psychics at all, it's about this woman's obsession with this guy and which turns into a clichéd YA triangle in short order. Yawn. I wanted something original and instead we got a boring version of X-Men crossed with Harry Potter, and this had the worst elements of both those and a poor YA novel into the bargain. There's even an guy unoriginally named Pyro. Barf. It's all adults, but it reads like a high-school romance. Sorry, not interested!

I wanted to read about the psychics, not how hot this woman thinks this guy is. If she'd just mentioned it a couple of times, that would be fine, but it's every other page and it's boring. I don't want to read about women like that. Women do not need a man to validate them and it's sad that so many female authors think they need not one, but two, including your standard trope bad-boy, to make a woman whole. I cannot recommend a novel that's as bad as this one, and is so insulting to women.

School for Psychics is similar to other “magic school” stories I’ve read, although in this case the students don’t learn magic but rather how to control their natural psychic abilities.

Teddy Cannon is living a life without purpose. At 24, she’s been kicked out of college, she can’t keep a job, and she doesn’t really have any friends. Her one talent is gambling, because she always knows when other people are lying. However, now she is $250,000 in debt to a loan shark. When a mysterious man offers to take care of her debts in exchange for attending a school that will hone her psychic talents for public service, she doesn’t feel like she has any choice but to agree.

Teddy struggles to adjust to life at the Whitfield Institute, having trouble with developing her powers as well as trusting the other students she’s been partnered with to have her back. It doesn’t help that mysterious things are happening at the school, like students disappearing without explanation from the campus. When she learns that the man who recruited her has information about her past that he’s kept secret, Teddy and her friends decide to use their new skills to try to clear up some of the mysteries surrounding them.

As in other books featuring mystical schools, a lot of the story involves Teddy attending classes and trying to learn how to master her abilities. That’s not to say there’s no action, but it’s mostly concentrated toward the end of the novel. Given the ending, I expect there will be more opportunities for Teddy to use her growing psychic talents in later books in the series, though.

The plot does include a potential love triangle, which some readers may find annoying. There’s a handsome FBI agent named Nick, who also happens to be Teddy’s teacher, as well as a hot (literally) fellow student nicknamed Pyro for his ability to start fires with his mind. However, Teddy doesn’t spend the entire book angsting over them like the characters in some novels, which made the presence of two possible romantic leads more tolerable to me.

I enjoyed the book enough that I zoomed through it quickly. I'd recommend it for readers who enjoy fantasy novels featuring school settings and coming of age stories.

A copy of this book was provided through NetGalley for review; all opinions expressed are my own.

I'm ready for the next book. Teddy and the other Misfits are great characters.

As I was reading, I continuously forgot they are all in their mid- to late- twenties. This story reads like it would be an intriguing YA book with the students being in high school.

I love the abilities everyone has and wish I had a bit of their powers for myself.

Things are confusing at the core even if you think you've got it figured out. Not everything is as it seems on the surface.

If you like a bit of paranormal, give this book a chance. I don't think you'd regret it!

Sadly I found nothing special about this book. The blurb made it sound interesting, but I found myself just being bored with the book, and the main character wasn't particularly likeable. All in all disappointed.