Book Review :: Slated, by Teri Terry

Slated by Teri Terry
Series: Slated #1
on May 3rd 2012
Genres: Dystopian, Science Fiction
Pages: 439
Goodreads

Kyla’s memory has been erased, her personality wiped blank, her memories lost forever.

She’s been Slated.

The government claims she was a terrorist and that they are giving her a second chance - as long as she plays by their rules. But echoes of the past whisper in Kyla’s mind. Someone is lying to her, and nothing is as it seems. Who can she trust in her search for the truth?

Last updated on 19 January 2022

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All about Slated, by Teri Terry

Slated, by Teri Terry follows the story of Kyla, who we first meet in the hospital in London, just about to go and meet her ‘Mum’, ‘Dad’ and ‘sister’, Amy. These aren’t her real parents; Amy isn’t her real biological sister either. But they are the people that she will now associate with ‘family’, ‘parents’, ‘sibling’.

Being Slated means that Kyla’s memories and her personality has been wiped clean, and she has been given a second chance at life, like the blurb says. With that comes the challenge of learning things again – not simple things like eating or talking, but things like going to school, making friends, keeping her Levo numbers high.

Slateds are made to wear a metal wrist band called a Levo, which ensures that they are always happy, or at least neutral  Because people who have been Slated have been terrorists or bad people in the past, their second chance is conditional on their well-being and their state of happiness if you like. If their Levo slips too low, blackouts, seizures and eventually death will follow. The Levos are removed when they are 21, and they can really start their second chance at life, free of the pressures of being connected to their Levos, and the government.

But as Kyla tries to relate to her new family, goes to school and Group (a meeting each week with kids in the area that have been Slated too) and meets government rebels, her beliefs, her thoughts, are challenged and she starts questioning who she is, who exactly is being Slated, why she can draw better with her left hand, even though she’s right-handed, why those drawings are often of things she’s never seen before, why she has slight memories of her past and why people keep disappearing…

My thoughts on Slated, by Teri Terry

It is written in first person, and in present tense, which I’m starting to get used to now. Slated is a fast-moving book, without a dull moment. It hooks you in from the first page and you want to keep reading right through…in one go.

With the typical teenage angst, bullies, first loves and a teen boy’s car without seat belts mixed in with Lorders who come and take people away, a mother who is nick-named The Dragon, a cat who knows when to wake Kyla up from her nightmares and a brick-laying lunatic, Slated is a great YA dystopian novel that seemed to me to be the perfect length and left me wondering what on earth will happen next. I thoroughly recommend it, and am looking forward to the next one, Fractured, which apparently will be released in May.