Open Minds by Susan Kaye Quinn [Book Review]

Open Minds (Mindjacked Trilogy #1) by Susan Kaye Quinn
Find at: Goodreads / Amazon 
Kira is a zero. Or, at least, she thought she was. In a world full of readers, the zeros are outcasts. Zeros can't read minds and share thoughts and feelings like readers can -- they are freaks. But Kira soon finds out that there is something even more freakish than a zero... and when she nearly kills her best friend, Raf, she knows she needs to find out more about mindjackers and their abilities.
 My Rating: 5/5
Main Character
Open Minds was SUCH a refreshing read for me. Although the protagonist is an outcast and doesn't fit in with the rest of her world, she wasn't incessantly whiny about her pariah-hood, and she never seemed like she was going to cry at the drop of a hat about it. I can't say that about some of the other YA books I'm reading at the moment. But with this book, I really felt a connection with the main female protag, and I truly wanted everything to get better for her, because I felt she truly deserved it. This book was written in the first person, but never did I feel like the internal dialog was annoying, incessantly ranty, or irrelevant. It was, dare I say, PERFECT.
Other Characters
I loved the characters. Every character had a purpose and motive for what they did or didn't do. None of them seemed like filler characters, and all of them were interesting in some way. The teachers had personalities, her parents and brother had personalities... even the occasional store clerk seemed to have a personality. Kira's best friend, Raf, was ridiculously sweet to her, and it made me smile whenever he tried to cheer her up or whenever they were teasing each other. Simon was an interesting and complicated character whose ulterior motives  saddened me, and yet... he redeemed himself in a way. The author was really good at making your emotions twist around between defense an offense when it came to Simon. There were times when I hated him, and times where he made my stomach knot up in hopeful anticipation and excitement.
Overall Story
The plot itself was done beautifully, and I love that the settings didn't just consist of some combination of home, school, and random forest. There were warehouses, bunkers, government facilities, a hospital, gas stations and convenience stores... the story was rich with locations, and never did I once feel bored. There was a real sense of movement to this book... things were really HAPPENING. It wasn't just a bunch of internal dialog with bits and pieces of action. There was action. The character DID THINGS.
And boy did Kira do things. I don't want to spoil anything, but there is a lot of doing in this book. Kira overcomes a LOT, and she challenges an entire government and forces her nation to examine their preconceived idea of social norms. Kira is a strong character, very willed, and for the most part, honest (you'll see what I mean). She struggles with the same insecurities and uncertainties as most girls her age do, and she had to make some tough decisions... and while she makes mistakes, she always tries to rectify them, and everything she does is genuine and done with some semblance of common sense and thought.
All in all, I was entertained throughout the entire book, was very impressed with Kira, and cannot wait to read the second book in this trilogy!
Reminds Me Of
As I was reading, I couldn't help but draw some parallels to the HEX trilogy by Rhiannon Lassiter. Strong main female characters with unique abilities, [highlight to show spoiler-->]struggling to liberate a group of children from a government facility[/spoiler]. And I love the HEX trilogy, as well.