Minders

Sadie Ames is a Minder. Privileged and high achieving, she has won a prestigious fellowship from the Roque Mind Corps to study a fellow human being in the most intimate way—by entering that person’s mind. Ford is a Subject: impoverished, enraged, and ignorant. He doesn’t know that Roque Industries, via its community health outreach program, has planted a chip in his brain that allows Sadie to ride along, looking out of his eyes and experiencing his every thought and emotion. The premise is enticing, though Jaffe’s exploration of it is laden with exposition and slow to unfold. As a character, Sadie is little more than her over-packed college application, and her observations (and judgments) of Ford take too long to coalesce into a plot. While Jaffe (Ghost Flower) plausibly sets up the mind-reading conceit, such effort is not invested upfront in her characters. It takes a couple hundred pages to get past the stereotypical prim nerd and angry thug, and readers may struggle to invest in Sadie and Ford, despite the mounting danger around then. Ages 12–up. Agent: Susan Ginsburg, Writers House. (Jan.)