Sekret by Lindsay Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I received an early release eArc of Sekret by Lindsay Smith through Netgalley.com. I made an update post when I was about 1/3 of the way through Sekret because I was really struck by how trapped these kids were and all I could think is this could really have happened. I remember reading a lot about the Cold War because I was always fascinated by covert operations and espionage books and movies even as a kid and a lot of the things I read always gave me the impression that there were a lot of people standing in line for rations of food and though they were being provided for by the government they were still starving. People were jailed for just disagreeing with the government which was against the law there. I read that different governments invested in supernatural studies to try to get an advantage over other governments. This book strikes me as delving into those rumors and giving the reader a good story about how this could have happened. She also goes one step further to show how genetic studies could have been exploited and played a part in the use of psychics and other supernaturals.

The one thing that prevented me from giving this book 5 stars is that I was sometimes confused by how some of the supernatural gifts worked for a couple of the students. I also was a little confused by how things went with her family because the story was told in a bit of a disjointed manner. Despite that I was really invested in Sekret and read for hours so that I could see how things would end. There were some great displays of the use of the gifts during training and live exercises. It was sort of bittersweet especially when it was hard to determine who could be trusted. As some of them developed other skills we saw more, but I wish there was more information about how things worked. Like if someone was scrubbed was that back to tabula rasa? There were some great surprises in this book also and I am glad to see there is a sequel and look forward to reading it.