Gifted by H.A. Swain

Before you read my review, I'd like to make two points clear.

First, I paid for this book out of my own hard-earned money.  I didn't even use a discount or coupon.  This is my own fault.

Second, I never read past the second chapter.  Again, I take the credit for this choice.

Dystopians are great! The writer takes a simple item and decide how it's going to change the world and its inhabitants.  In this book, the simple item is a brain change.  Basically, if you want to be a famous singer, you can go in and have your brain tuned.  It'll implant everything that you need to know in order to be a famous singer and remove all of the unnecessary stuff.  In theory, this could have ended up to be a great story.

What I was faced with instead was SCEWL and an institute named after the Kardashians.  We have descendants of popular actors and singers.  Now, don't get me wrong.  I have a lot of respect for those chosen career paths.  It takes a lot of determination, hard work and raw talent to make a respectable name for yourself.  However!  In Swain's future, people seem to be determined by who their ancestors were.  Well, after all, you're a Marley.  Come on!

So I've given this a lot of thought.  My biggest issue is that this book isn't being sarcastic or attempting to poke fun in any way.  In this version, famous media personnel are the focus of society.  If Will Smith was your great-grandfather, you've got it made.  I'm not going to jump into a rant on the dumbing down of society, but there are so many  more worthy ways this could have gone rather than just pandering to twelve-year-old children who don't know any better.  Yeah, great idea!  Let's just get a bunch of famous people and write a book about how we can rewire brains so these kids can be just like that with no real work involved!  Yeah!  Let's do that!  (Side note:  That was sarcasm.)

Now, in all fairness, there's a strong likelihood that there's something meatier inside this book.  Hopefully, it turns out that there's a depth here that teaches our younger generation that taking the easy way out isn't always the best way.  Hopefully, it teaches something useful instead of just the negative images that are in the first two chapters.  Hopefully, there's actually a good story in here.

I can only give you a heads up about the first two chapters.  I could pick it up and read more to find out what could possibly be great about this book after such a disheartening beginning, but I just love myself too much to put myself through it.

If you've read this book and have different feedback, I'd love to hear it!  If there's something I'm missing, I'll be happy to go back and read more!