Open Minds (Book One of the Mindjack Trilogy) [Kindle Edition]

Susan Kaye Quinn (Author)

Book Description

When everyone reads minds, a secret is a dangerous thing to keep.

Sixteen-year-old Kira Moore is a zero, someone who can't read thoughts or be read by others. Zeros are outcasts who can't be trusted, leaving her no chance with Raf, a regular mindreader and the best friend she secretly loves. When she accidentally controls Raf's mind and nearly kills him, Kira tries to hide her frightening new ability from her family and an increasingly suspicious Raf. But lies tangle around her, and she's dragged deep into a hidden underworld of mindjackers, where having to mind control everyone she loves is just the beginning of the deadly choices before her.

TOP 5 FINALIST for 2012 Best Indie Book, Young Adult Fiction - The Kindle Book Review

"I'm not entirely sure Susan Kaye Quinn didn't jack into my mind herself to make me fall in love with this book! This book is full of awesome." - Jade Hanke's Review 

Mindjack Trilogy (novels): Open Minds, Closed Hearts, Free Souls (now available)

Mindjack Origins Collection: Mindjack novellas (Mind Games, The Handler, The Scribe),exclusive deleted scenes from Free Souls, flash fiction, and more

Recommended Reading Order
Open Minds 
Closed Hearts
The Mindjack Origins Collection
Free Souls

For more information,

OR

Try the Mindjack Trilogy Digital Box Set (all three bestselling novels)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Wow - just when I was getting a little bored of YA a book like this comes along and just wows me back! ... I was holding my breath right up until the last page." - Mel's Random Reviews

 
"Wow oh Wow! I just inhaled this book. Quinn is an amazing author with an even more amazing imagination. In some ways Kira reminds me a lot of Katniss from the Hunger Games series." - TwiMom101 Book Blog

"I'm not entirely sure Susan Kaye Quinn didn't jack into my mind herself to make me fall in love with this book! This book is full of awesome." - Jade Hanke's Review 
  

"Open Minds boils with action, adventure, and surprises. I was fully invested in this inventive world and the protagonist. A story that had me imagining what if, long after I finished it." -- Terry Lynn Johnson, author of Dogsled Dreams

From the Back Cover

"Open Minds pushed me to the edge of my imagination and then tossed me over the edge as I screamed for more. Quinn has created an intensely dangerous world both inside the minds of her characters and outside - a world that left me asking myself questions I would never have asked before. When you can literally control the thoughts of others, how far will you go?" --Michelle Davidson Argyle, author of Monarch and Cinders

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• File Size: 771 KB
• Print Length: 340 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1466354267
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B005Z1RRUU
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #910 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)
  • #2 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Science Fiction > Genetic Engineering
  • #5 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Science Fiction > Dystopian

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Live To Read December 10, 2011

By Chels

Format:Paperback

An interesting take on being unique in society, author Susan Kaye Quinn introduces Kira to the reader. Kira doesn't quite fit in. One might expect her to be an outsider due to the way she dresses, speaks, or conform to societal rules, but that is not the case. Instead, Kira cannot read minds or have her own mind read in a society where just about everyone else connects with their minds.

However, Kira might just have an ability that could be better than simply having her mind read. Kira can "mindjack," an ability that enables her to tell people what to do and what to believe. Not being naturally controlling, Kira hasn't deliberately used her power on anyone and isn't even sure if she likes the ability yet. When another character comes into Kira's life and begins to clarify things, Kira must make her decision.

This book is very different, the author took the world's definition of normalcy and turned it on its head. Kira, as a character, was fun to get to know. She could be overly cautious and not believe in herself enough at times, but she could also be clever and sweet. The two other characters who walked the line between secondary and primary characters had a lot of impact in the novel. There is a bit of a love triangle that the author handles well, also gives the reader another subplot to look forward to. The book was well-written and hard to put down, recommended to young adult/teen readers.

*Complimentary copy received for this review, does not affect my opinion in any way*

41 of 49 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Just okay March 27, 2012

By J. Tsao

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

The setting in Open Minds is a future world (late 21st century) where almost everyone is a "reader." Chemicals in the environment triggered a massive genetic evolution spawning generations of mind readers. During puberty, children begin to both involuntarily send out there thoughts and read the thoughts of others in range, which means most conversations take place mentally.

Some children never go through the change and are designated as zeros. Sixteen year old Kira Moore is a zero....or so she thinks. Strange things begin to happen and Kira finds out that she is not a zero, nor a reader, but instead a jacker - one who can enter another's mind and control it. Much to Kira's surprise, there are jackers all around, but they choose to live incognito lest they get picked up by the military and placed in jacker camps.

***Minor spoilers ahead***

I initially had a hard time rating this book. There were parts I liked and parts that I didn't and overall I felt that it was just okay, but I had a hard time figuring out why I felt that way. I think my biggest issue with the book was the character and story transitions and evolutions. They did not happen naturally at all, and therefore I didn't relate to the characters or the larger story. For example, Simon (who has really never interacted with Kira at all) kisses Kira, and the next day he is her boyfriend. Huh? What happened to conversation and getting to know one another? A clan of jackers tries to recruit Kira and after threatening her they try to kill her best friend. What? Starting with threats and attempted murder doesn't seem to be the best way to convince someone to join a group. Kira finds out she is a jacker and within a week she is the most powerful super jacker ever. Again, huh? We never see Kira struggling to figure out how to use her new mindjacking ability and all of the sudden we are told that she can do it better than anyone else.

I also found Simon to be completely creepy and stalker-like and did not find him to be a likable or sympathetic character at all.

***Slightly bigger spoiler***

One of my biggest issues was the science (or lack thereof). I read a lot of fantasy and speculative fiction and I'm fine with suspension of disbelief, but I don't like contradictions within the world that it presented. Kira lives in a future version of our world, therefore genetics should work largely the same. She hypothesizes (and her dad thinks she is right) that she a super strong jacker because she has the jacker gene from both her mom's side (grandma) and her dad's side. She states that it must reside on the X chromosome. Well, what she is saying makes no sense and I'll tell you why. Kira is basically saying that she has 2 jacker genes, one each on her X chromosome - I'll call them Xj. So Kira is Xj-Xj and is a jacker. Her dad therefore must be Xj-Y and is also a jacker. That works fine and at this point we don't know if the jacker gene is dominant or recessive. The problem is her mother's side. In order for Kira to have two Xj genes, her mother must be Xj-X. Her mother is NOT a jacker, so that means that the Xj gene is recessive. What makes no sense is that grandma was a jacker. So grandma must have been Xj-Xj, making her the same as Kira and every other female jacker which blows the "Kira is special" theory out of the water. Unless you assume that the jacker gene is recessive, then grandma could have been Xj-X, but the problem is then with Kira's mother who would also have to be Xj-X and not a jacker. This just annoys me to no end because it clearly wasn't thought through. I suppose there could be something around gene expression, and another gene that triggers the expression of the jacker gene which grandma had and mom didn't, but that wasn't mentioned. If a book is going to give a simplistic explanation for a genetic mutation, I'd like it to at least match up with 10th grade biology.

***end spoilers***

As I mentioned, overall this book was just okay. I probably won't be reading any more in the trilogy as there was nothing in the story that was compelling enough for me to want to continue.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Looking for an amazing new YA dystopian/sci-fi read? Look no further! November 24, 2011

By Danielle M. Smith VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

In a world where everyone who's normal has the ability to read minds being special isn't exactly what Kira was hoping for. As the world around her booms and brightens with the loud cacophony of thoughts Kira's world is silent, the only noise she hears are the thoughts in her own mind. That is until her best friend Raf attempts to kiss her and immediately ends up falling to the ground completely knocked out. From that point forward Kira's life changes forever. She learns from a fellow student that she's a mindjacker, and a powerful one at that. Having the ability to enter and control the thoughts of those around her is the last thing she'd thought she'd be doing during high school, but it may lead to more problems than simply knocking her best friend unconscious.

In a growing pool of young adult fiction Open Minds by Susan Kaye Quinn stands out as a novel with a fantastic premise, excellent characters and an incredibly well executed plot. Being a fan of dystopian and sci-fi in young adult books this was exactly the type of book I was hoping to fall in love with and absolutely did. Quinn took the idea of human evolution and took it one step further by adding an element of involvement from the government. It wasn't that they were simply involved in the aftermath of the evolution, but the initial development by introducing toxins into the water supply that eventually triggered the first changes to mind reading by all. This was certainly a unique concept, especially since the entire population was affected by it and I'm now interested to see where the idea goes from here in the next two books in the series.

Now everyone who knows my reading preferences know that I am not a huge fan of the typical love triangle and at first I thought I was going to be annoyed by Kira's love intersts, but I absolutely wasn't. Obvious to anyone who reads Open Minds there's a huge development at the end of the story that changes everything making the love triangle completely different than those other more typical situations. Between the two I'd certainly say I was much more on the side of Raf, her childhood friend, than Simon, the "bad boy", but as the story went on I did feel more sympathetic towards Simon and his situation. In many ways I could understand Kira's desire to be with Simon because of their shared abilities, but at first the way she shunned Raf was a bit irritating since he was always so supportive of her "zero" status. In the end the conflict was perfect and the way all of their relationships progressed were extremely believable.

Open Minds by Susan Kaye Quinn is a brilliant addition to the ever increasing pool of dystopian/sci-fi young adult fiction. There's something for readers of all types in this fantastic new YA novel, from action to romance to science and more. As many of my readers know, I don't read many self-published books primarily because I find the stories underdeveloped and poorly edited. To be honest I'm completely shocked Quinn's Mindjacker series hasn't been picked up by a major publisher, because it certainly doesn't fall into either of my dis-qualifiers. This is a novel that's been extremely well thought out, written beautifully, and it's obviously been edited professionally. YA readers who love authors like Ally Condie, Veronica Roth, Lauren Oliver and others would be missing out if they failed to pick up Open Minds by Susan Kaye Quinn. Join Kira on her journey to save her fellow mindjackers and potentially change the landscape of her world forever.

My original review was posted at There's A Book.

More About the Author

Susan Kaye Quinn grew up in California, where she wrote snippets of stories and passed them to her friends during class. Her teachers pretended not to notice and only confiscated her stories a couple times.

She left writing behind to pursue a bunch of engineering degrees (B.S. Aerospace Engineering, M.S. Mechanical Engineering, Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering) and work everywhere from NASA to NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) to a little Venice Beach restaurant called The Green Bean (she was the bookkeeper). She has designed aircraft engines, studied global warming, and held elected office (as a school board member). Now that she writes novels, her business card says "Rocket Scientist and Author," and she doesn't have to sneak her notes anymore.

Which is too bad.

All that engineering comes in handy when dreaming up dystopian future worlds or mixing science with fantasy to conjure slightly plausible inventions. For her stories, of course. Just ignore that stuff in the basement.

Her middle grade boys clamor for more middle grade books with magic and gadgets and less teen novels with kissing. Unfortunately for them, she enjoys writing both.

Susan writes from the Chicago suburbs with her three boys, two cats, and one husband. Which, it turns out, is exactly as much as she can handle.

Check out Susan's author website (www.susankayequinn.com) for more information about her books, and subscribe to her newsletter (http://bit.ly/SubscribeToSusansNewsletter) to be notified of upcoming releases.