Review - The Predicteds by Christine Seifert

Title: The Predicteds 

Author: Christine Seifert

Series: Stand Alone

Pages: 342

Published: September 1, 2011 by Sourcebooks Fire

ISBN: 9781402260490

Source: Publisher sent for honest review

Description: Your future is not your own... "We wanted to know what makes a good kid good and a bad kid bad. Can you blame us for that? We found an astoundingly, marvelously simple answer: The brain isn't so much a complicated machine as it is a crystal ball. If you look into it, you will see everything you want to know." -Dr. Mark Miliken, senior researcher at Utopia Laboratories

Who will it be?  Will the head cheerleader get pregnant?  Is the student council president a secret drug addict?  The whole school is freaking out about PROFILE, an experimental program that can predict students' future behavior.  The only question Daphne wants answered is whether Jesse will ask her out...but he's a Predicted, and there's something about his future he's not telling her. 


 I Give This ...

 

The idea behind this really sounded fascinating.  Imagine the knowledge that could be pulled from this type of program.  Unfortunately I felt that it felt a little short of my expectations, and I didn't fully understand how PROFILE worked.

 

I really enjoyed the fact that Daphne was so connected to PROFILE without even really knowing it.  Her mom was the creator of the program.  But, when she started to have a serious disagreement with how the program was being used she simply walked away from it.  But, not before Daphne herself was tested.  I liked how Daphne integrates herself into her new high school when they move.  She's the type of person that gets along with everybody.  She tolerates the popular crowd, but makes no excuses for hanging out with whoever she wants too.  I like her reactions when she learns about PROFILE and what it does.  

It's interesting watching how the school and public reacts when the information from PROFILE is released.  It's like a new form of segregation.  I found it fascinating that the idea of what you could do in the future might define who you are know.  And everybody reacts so badly to it, even those who are PROFILED to do something so simple are grouped with those who were predicted to be violent criminals.  They are treated less than human.

The part of the book that just didn't really capture me was the PROFILE program itself.  It just didn't really make sense.  I didn't understand how a program could predict if you might get pregnant in high school or commit murder.   I don't think it could be 100% accurate, and that's how people were treating it.  It left no room for people to make the right decision, instead just seemed to count on the fact that they would always make bad ones.  I also didn't like how two-sided Daphne could be about the results.  She was determined not to treat the predicteds any differently.  Yet, she constantly was mistrusting Jesse because of his results.

So, it was interesting but not executed the way I had hoped.