The Institute

The Institute
author: Kayla Howarth
published: January 7th 2015
pages: 280
my rating: 2 out of 5 stars


Living in constant fear. Always looking over your shoulder. The source of your fear? The Institute.

Allira Daniels will do anything to keep her Defective brother safe from the Institute. They claim to protect Defectives, but it’s human nature to fear the unknown. Defectives are dangerous, they possess abilities that no human should be able to. To Allira and the rest of her family, the Institute seems more like a prison than the safe-haven they promote themselves to be. Protecting Shilah from that fate is their number one priority.

When Allira stumbles across a car crash involving two of her school classmates, she ignores all of her father’s warnings of laying low and not drawing attention to herself. By doing so, she may have just caught the eye of the Institute. She’s not Defective, but what seventeen-year-old girl has the ability to pull two teenage boys away from a fiery rubble and walk away without a scratch? It would definitely be seen as suspicious.

Allira and her family need to make decisions. Do they stay, or do they flee again? Will they be coming for her? Will her whole family come under investigation? Will they discover Shilah and his ability to predict the future?

Are you Defective? The Institute is coming for you. 



I was really hoping to like this book. The cover looked interesting and it was free to download on amazon, so I obviously wanted to read it. But while it was enjoyable enough to read it just didn't click with me.

My biggest problem with the book was that nothing really happened in the majority of the book and then suddenly out of nowhere something huge would happen and for a few pages I was really engrossed in the book but it would go back to some kind of almost boring routine. So even though the book is only 280 pages long, it felt way longer most of the time but also rushed since the book does go through many different "parts" without a satisfying transition between them.

Although the book seemed pretty intriguing when I first heard of it, it turned out to have lots of the typical dystopian elements in it, which isn't necessarily bad, but I am just tired of reading dystopian novels that all seem similar.
Lot's of the plot twists where pretty predictable and the ones that I didn't see coming just didn't wow me as they probably should've.

The main character wasn't super special but I liked her and felt with her while she was struggling. I could understand her desire to protect her brother but the fact that her brother was only two years or so younger than her kind of annoyed me. She treated him like he was five and couldn't make his own decisions. And since her brother isn't really mentioned unless his defect is needed or Allira needs to protect him, he could basically have any age since he doesn't really have more character depth than absolutely necessary.

That aside it was still enjoyable. I didn't dislike reading it but I didn't particularly love it either. The writing was good it was pretty easy to get into and overall it was relaxing and easy to read. This review seems really negative but the book really isn't bad – I just didn't think it was particularly special or outstanding – and I can see other people really enjoying it.