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Select (Select #1)

  • Marit Wiesenberg
  • Oct 13, 2017
  • 4 min read

Release Date-3rd October

Publisher-Charlesbridge Teen

Genre-Teens & YA

Kindle Edition-352 Pages

🌟🌟🌟1/2 Stars

All Opinions Are My Own.

May Contain Spoilers.

Coming from a race of highly-evolved humans, Julia Jaynes has the perfect life. The perfect family. The perfect destiny. But there’s something rotten beneath the surface—dangerous secrets her father is keeping; abilities she was never meant to have; and an elite society of people determined to keep their talents hidden and who care nothing for the rest of humanity. So when Julia accidentally disrupts the Jaynes’ delicate anonymity, she’s banished to the one place meant to make her feel inferior: public high school. Julia’s goal is to lay low and blend in. Then she meets him—John Ford, tennis prodigy, all-around good guy. When Julia discovers a knack for reading his mind, and also manipulating his life, school suddenly becomes a temporary escape from the cold grip of her manipulative father. But as Julia’s powers over John grow, so do her feelings. For the first time in her life, Julia begins to develop a sense of self, to question her restrictive upbringing and her family prejudices. She must decide: can a perfect love be

worth more than a perfect life?

Select was such a delightful read, I was so happy to have wished for this on NetGalley and to have that wish granted was fabulous. So Select is the first book in a new Young Adult paranormal series. It revolves around Julia Jaynes who Comes from a race of highly-evolved humans, This group hide in plain sight amongst the general populace who they refer to as outsiders. Julia seems to have it all, The perfect family and lifestyle at least this is what it appears outwardly to others. After an incident that gets this elite family group noticed Jayne is made an example of and sent to the local public high school with the outsiders and ordered to lie low, suppress and also tamp down her emerging extraordinary abilities. Here she re-meets John Ford and the two overtime become friendly. Now there is a lot more to this Young Adult debut novel than meets the eye, you need to look deeper beneath the layers and unravel the perfect illusion that is Julia's life. Most of the characters that claim to care for our young Julia are toxic to her. Her father Novak is a big old douche, manipulative, cold and cruel but with a strange ability that compels others to gravitate towards him, giving him their faith and trust, in fact, It seems to have at times an almost cultish element to some of the family's interactions. Victoria her step-mother is a first class bitch, despite practically raising Julia from the age of Two she treats her like a second-class citizen, putting her own daughter Liv over Julia in everything. Then there's the younger sister Liv herself, self-centred, over-entitled, little princess, I really don't like her and really wish Julia would stop making excuses for the spoilt little madam. The bestie Angus, well I was divided in my opinion of him I'm going to see how he behaves in future as I'm pretty sure we haven't seen the last of him. I have my eye on you boyo. Oh, and Angus and the Lost Boys dropped poor Julia like a bad disease when she was on the out and these are meant to be her friends. So where was I, Oh yes Julia and Ford, well these two start a fledgeling relationship filled with the usual teenage angst. I will also say that I wasn't overly fond of the methods employed by Julia initially of reading John's mind, but gave her a temporary free pass because she's young and still learning. In herself, Julia was a show of extremes so grown up in some ways and then so irritatingly naive and selfish in others, I myself think her privileged upbringing played a big part in shaping Julia. And am hoping she will evolve so much more going forward. As for John himself well he seems a very solid lad, A touch rebellious but he definitely seems to have his head screwed on right, he comes across as more grounded than Julia and more adult also. As you can imagine this tale is not plain sailing and when its time to get out of dodge, things around Julia start to collapse like a pack of cards, decisions need making and secrets are finally revealed and on this note, I will leave it. Select leaves us with more questions than answers. it sets itself up for the next in this series nicely, which I will definitely be reading as I now feel so invested in this story and its many diverse characters. This may be a Young Adult Novel but I would definitely recommend to all ages it kept my attention and I'm forty-four. It's well written and a definite page turner, pulling the reader in. Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for providing me with a free arc of Select by Marit Wiesenberg, it was lovely of you to grant my wish. This is my own personal unbiased opinion.

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