A really good book with an amazing storyline and just as amazing characters , the plot kept you entertained as the story progressed and the characters where perfect they were funny yet kick-ass and had just the right amount of romance .overall this book was an easy 4 stars

Lacey Chu lives in a version of Canada where, at a certain age, everyone gets a 'baku' - a robot pet crossed with a smartphone.
Lacey dreams of working for the company that makes bakus, but her dreams are left in tatters when she doesn't get approved for a place at the Profectus Academy.
Then Lacey encounters Jinx, a cat baku who does things that normal bakus don't.
Suddenly Lacey's dream is back on track after being accepted into the Profectus Academy.
Lacey will need to be careful to avoid Jinx catching any unwanted attention, especially as he seems to have a mind of his own.
What is Jinx?
Who made him?

The concept of bakus intrigued me and I can definitely imagine people having something similar in the future. I would definitely want one.
Lacey was a likeable and relatable protagonist. I thought she handled things pretty well.
Jinx was probably my favourite character. I liked how sassy he was at times.
The plot was interesting and held my attention, but I wasn't gripped or blown away.
At the moment I don't think I will be reading the sequel as I don't feel that I need to.
The writing style was very easy to read and I found myself reading quite quickly.

Overall, this was an enjoyable read.

Fantastic novel by Amy McCulloch.

Set in a futuristic world involving bakus (robotic animals) instead of using mobile phones in everyday life. Lacey originally gets rejected for her dream school. But on stumbling onto Jinx, she learns that she will be attending after all. Along the way, she makes new friends, stumbles into an old enemy who is determined to make her fail and some hidden secrets about the origin of her Baku (Jinx).

Lots of fun and entertainment along the way. Interesting concept, quite different to the books I normally read. Enjoyed this.

Jinxed is a romp of a book, sitting perfectly at the upper MG/lower YA bound and with a fun focus on technology and the future! I really wasn’t expecting to enjoy this book as much as I did – I tend to lean towards fantasy, not contemporary or sci-fi, so the near-future elements weren’t necessarily going to be my cup of tea, and I was expecting this to be slightly cookie-cutter YA, complete with angst and romance. But I was very pleasantly surprised to find that it has much more of the adventure and friendship feel of a really good middle grade book, just with a slightly older focus, so would be absolutely perfect for those pre-teens and teens sitting in the middle of the two age ranges.

The story follows Lacey Chu, who is desperate to get into the elite Profectus Academy and start her tech career. This is set in the near-future, with much more prominent technology than we have currently, but the way in which that tech is seamlessly incorporated into society definitely feels believable as a place we could be headed. Moncha, the largest tech firm in America, owns everything from neighbourhoods to schools, and definitely in no way resembles Apple at all, wink wink. The coolest part of this tech-filled world is the bakus, which are smart-pets – electronic, customisable animals that have all the functions of a smartphone or tablet and then some. They’re a literal status symbol as well as a tool, and Lacey is devastated when she is rejected from Profectus and only able to get a bottom-tier baku – until she finds a much better, but badly mangled cat baku in the woods. Once she fixes Jinx up, her fortunes start to change, starting with that crucial acceptance to the academy…

There’s so much going on in this book, from amazing representation of girls in STEM to issues of snobbery and elitism in technology, to regular old school bullying (which doesn’t go away, no matter how many robots you might throw at it) – and yet, for all that it incorporates these issues, the book remains light-hearted and extremely good fun. I absolutely loved the baku battles, which are a sort of mix of Pokémon battles combined with Robot Wars! There’s no romance, which I thought was an excellent decision, as it would have felt shoehorned in given how much the story is focused on friendship and self-belief. Watching Lacey navigate the world of Profectus had me rooting for her, especially because she was just so darn competent at her tech work, which is such a positive thing to see. I couldn’t help but fall in love with Jinx, either!

It’s definitely a very fast-paced book, with a good combination of real life and mystery, and it left me really wanting to read the second book! We need more books like this – books that sit in that early teen phase, and books that don’t follow the classic YA romance-in-everything mould. Five out of five stars!

Well that was a pretty fun read!! Though I don't think I was the audience for this book (I'm probably too old) and I'm not that much into technology, it was still an interesting read. Especially now when children are more into technology, I think this would be a fun read for a lot of kids!

This was a fantastic book that kept me entertained from start to finish. The battles and the Baku kind of reminded me of Pokémon so I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who loves that. I particularly liked Jinx as his sass was really enjoyable to read also, I just really want a Baku. I would highly recommend this book and I can't wait to read the sequel.



Thank you to SOURCEBOOKS Kids, Simon and Schuster UK Children's and to NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

"Sometimes you have to change your dreams, Lacey. No matter how hard you work, sometimes things won't go your way"

* * * *
4 / 5

So I’m probably a bit (read: a lot) too old to be the target audience for a book like Jinxed, but dang it was a fun book to read whilst I was on the train for three hours. Because that’s how long it took me to start and finish Jinxed. A girl with big dreams, electronic companion pets, a school with a twist; Jinxed is a coming of age book with all the classic themes and some different ideas.

"You must know that feeling, as an inventor. There's the work you're supposed to be doing, and then there's that secret project that sets your heart on fire"

Lacey Chu has one big dream for her life: to work at Monchu, a tech company that designs and develops companion robots. To do that, she’s got to get into a particular school. With admission comes a high grade pet – called a baku -, money, and unparalleled learning opportunities. When she fails to get in, Lacey’s life crashes down around her and not even her best friend can cheer her up. Lacey resigns herself to owning a beetle baku, but then she finds a crumpled shell of a highly advanced baku. With its restoration comes her admittance to Profectus.

At Profectus comes opportunities and dangers. Lucy’s new baku, Jinx, doesn’t seem to behave like he ought to, and it seems like there are secrets around every corner. Particularly about her father, a Monchu engineer who died when she was young.

The story was fun. No doubt about it. It’s a classic setting: a school for special kids with a play on the animal companion trope. The idea of bakus was fun and made me want one, and Lacey herself was relateable and kind hearted, even if she messed up now and again.

This is a great book for young adults with the right kinds of moral messages – about friendships and being true to yourself, etc. – and a couple of twists on classic tropes.

My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of Jinxed.

I’m so glad I stumbled across this book. Once I’d picked it up I found it hard to put down. It pulled me in right from it’s first page and I couldn’t wait to pick it up and carry on reading.

Lacey was a likeable and relatable main character. Even her ‘chosen one’ type of skills in engineering didn’t seem out of place. Instead she just came across as driven. Her relationship with her friends old and new were very believable especially when Lacey and her best friend Zora were figuring out how they still fitted into each others lives.

The baku’s (smart pets) were amazing. They were described in loving but not over the top detail and the relationship between person and baku was amazing. They reminded me of part dæmon , part familiar while being all tech. They were brilliant and I’d so have one.

This book was also great for showing girls and women in STEM. Engineering, coding, you name it and there were women and girls not only doing it but doing it well. The founder of the company that makes baku’s is a woman, Lacey is a brilliant engineer and her best friend Zora is into coding.

If you’ve not read this brilliant gem of a book yet I thoroughly recommend it – it was so good I’ve immediately downloaded book 2. Not something I often do.

I read it very fast and was fascinated by this mix of high tech sci-fi and ya.
I think it's a bit underdeveloped and I assume there's more to come.
I loved both Lacey and Jinx and hope to be able to read about them soon.
Recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

This was a fast paced, quick read set in a future where our smartphones and devices have been turned into animal companions. It’s an interesting idea, and a believable one. The world building extrapolates forwards to a time where these ‘baku’ devices are both needed to access society and valued personal companions. The richer you are, the higher level Baku you can afford, the better jobs you can get etc, perpetuating class divides and other social issues.

Unfortunately, this rich well of things to explore is never really looked at, with the storyline rather Harry Potter meets Pokemon. It is a Middle Grade book - upper Middle Grade to lower Young Adult in my view - so things have to be kept to a certain level of complexity and darkness, but I felt there were missed opportunities here.

That said, the story is fast and the familiar tropes make reading it like spending time with an old friend. It skins across the surface of the world it exists in, generating enough conflict and excitement to keep the pages turning, but not reaching enough depth to make it truly memorable.

I received a copy via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I recieved a free digital copy of this book from Netgalley, so thank you to Simon and Schuster UK children's for granting my wish.

I absolutely adored the sound of this book, the sci-fi nature really called to me. However I was a little disappointed mainly due to the young age of the character... I think I was expecting late teens and got early teens... At least thats the way it sounded to me.

I'm guessing the Prologue St the beginning was Monica Chan... I mean I thought it was like a flash forward of the mc Lacey Chu... Apparently not...

The characters were all blunt and unrefined - as you'd expect from a young teen - and I couldn't relate to any of them.... How none of them realised Jinx wasn't normal is beyond me - he doesn't act remotely like a normal Baku, like not even a little bit. Following on from that how did her team mates just turn on her like that, that's cruel - I know kids can be so cruel but still... It was a little too cruel...

The ending was so disappointing... I expected much more and it has a cliff hanger which I loathe in books... I didn't realise this was a the first in a series... I guess that's my own fault for not checking before hand sadly

This is a young adult book about a girl and her modern technology companion. I thought this was well written, and had Golden Compass and Hunger Games vibes to it. I really enjoyed this book and completed it in a day and I look forward to reading what happens next. I would highly recommend this is you are interested in someone’s view of how technology and the modern world could evolve.

3.5 stars. I enjoyed the book (docking half a star for a cliffhanger ending, which I hate). Girls in engineering and the world-building were the two things that got me hooked. I can completely imagine this world in 50 years, when animal bakus (robotic companions) will replace mobile phones and we will have descended into lives of constant immersion and surveillance. The surveillance/privacy part was not exactly explored, but I guess that wasn't quite part of the story.

There were a few things I found trite -- the plot was the stereotypical rivalry between our poor underdog (but brilliant) narrator and the spoilt (but also brilliant, if a little less so) son of a bigshot father. The ending was rather a letdown, not the cliffhanger itself, but the final reveal. After this fascinating set-up, it appeared too simplistic. Also simplistic was the idea that a big corporation had the welfare of people as its primary agenda, but I'm sure that's down to a 15-year-old's starry-eyed PoV. Then, the Baku Battles -- not a fan. It was a kind of Hunger Games type reality show, but for bakus. Didn't exactly ring right for me as an incentive to be creative.

There were also way too many boys/men than girls/women. There were absolutely no women in power or any that took centrestage, even though the principal of the school was a woman. Even the one adult that helped Lacey was a man. I wonder if this is an unconscious "balancing" out that happens when the main character is female. I am quite attached to this theory because I've seen in my own writing (I'm working on it). Basically, since we've internalised the skewed representation in media in general, and conditioned to give male voices more weight, we end up overcompensating.

That sounds like a lot of moaning, but I mostly liked the book. Review copy from NetGalley.

A 4.5 star rating, but only because that ending was brutal!
Lacey Chu is a fantastic engineer. She harbours dreams of working for MONCHA, a leading firm behind the concept of the baku - robotic companions that also act as phones. Unfortunately, it looks like her dream will fall at the first hurdle when she’s not accepted at the special school linked to the company.
With her dreams seemingly in tatters Lacey is not thinking straight when she tries to rescue her best friend’s baku and ends up finding something that many people are looking for. A heap of scrap metal, she thinks, but when she gets back to her workshop Lacey realises it’s a baku like no other.
Over the summer she does her utmost to get it working. In a kind of fantasy fulfilment, things work just fine and suddenly Lacey finds herself heading to the school and getting caught up in stuff she only dreamt of.
While this was set in North America, the whole concept and the battling felt like Pokemon had been brought to life and given personalities. That in itself was great fun, and the dynamics between Lacey and her new-found friends was entertaining. However, not everything is as it seems and there are definitely people suspicious of the skills Lacey and her baku exhibit.
I enjoyed this so much I’ve already pre-ordered Unleashed as I cannot leave this not knowing who on earth is behind what happened at the end. I also wonder whether we’ll learn a little more about the mysterious Mr Chu.
Huge thanks to NetGalley for putting me onto this one.

I really loved this, such an enjoyable read. Great YA sci-fi once you pick this up you’ll find it hard to put down. I loved the character of Lacey so much, and of course jinx but I won’t say much about jinx or spoilers ! A really well written fast paced read, highly recommended

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

An innovative, original and gripping new novel from Amy McCulloch. Jinxed has a really strong female lead who interest in STEM was lovely and refreshing to see in a YA novel.

This is a story that draws you in from the first page and doesn't let you go. A truly enjoyable read, and one you could read many times and not get bored of.

If you like the Hunger Games then this a book you should consider reading.

A sweet and solid YA sci fi that reads like a mix of Pokemon and Angelic Layer, Jinxed is the story of a talented young engineer named Lacey who lives in a world where smartphones have been replaced by intelligent, animal-shaped robot companions named baku. Lacey, of course, wants nothing more than to be a 'companioneer', essentially a baku designer, and the mysterious cat baku Jinx might be her ticket to that dream. There's no real surprises in this story, but it's an enjoyable if light read that was only let down by errors in the Kindle formatting.

I want a jinx!
Jinx is a Baku, an electronic companion which can replace all other electronic devices whilst still allowing you to take part in the world minus the phone! Not the best explanation I know but such a good idea! A “pet” that connects to you and updates you with all communications as and when needed. If only!
Really enjoyed the whole concept and will be following up with the next instalment

I accidentally read this book in pretty much one sitting. Once I started Jinxed by Amy McCulloch, I could not put it down. I ended up completely invested in Lacey's life and sped through it. I got it in my NYA Lit Fest goody bag. It's released in two weeks but I absolutely could not wait to share my review, and I hope you pre-order Jinxed because it is definitely worth it.

5 Words: Privilege, expectations, family, betrayal, friendship.

It was a fantastic sci-fi that sits so close to the world we know that it didn't take much suspension of belief to immerse yourself in the world. I loved the engineering aspects, the coding aspects, the whole technology of the baku's (I want a baku). Even the setting itself, a whole town centered around and dominated by a single company, sprang to life before my eyes.

I loved Lacey so much. Her story really explores privilege, and how not having it puts you at a disadvantage, always. And I love how she rallied against it. Even with the most crushing disappointment weighing down on her, her resentment at the privilege of others, she still acknowledged her own privilege and pushed on to do her best when everything seemed stacked against her. She works hard.

Jinxed is the first book in a series, but it didn't feel like it. The story is wholly fleshed out on its own, it doesn't feel like it's just setting things up. There is a clear arc throughout the book, but I get the feeling that nothing dropped into the story is accidental. I feel a lot of clues have been subtly dropped regarding a world that, once you start digging, is actually pretty sinister. *puts on conspiracy hat*

There is a delicious thread of mystery throughout the story, and I was always kept wondering about the why. WHY did this or that happen? WHO was behind it? WHAT is the bigger picture that's being hinted at.

Although it could technically be read as a standalone, Jinxed is so addictive and has SUCH and ending that I can't wait for the next one. It's definitely one I'll reread as I loved Lacey (and particularly her friendship with Zora) and I'm now off to read some of the author's other books.

This book has such an interesting and exciting premise! I didn't enjoy the author's previous book but this book completely stands on its own. A great YA fantasy/sci-fi release.