4.5 stars. 
 Although I've had Slated for some months now from the Australian publisher Hachette, when I saw it on NetGalley - as it was debuting in the US soon - I told myself I have got to get around to reading it. And so I did - and loved it! Dystopias at the moment are grinding on me. I love them, don't get me wrong, because of the harsh, conflicting, and sometimes war-torn realities and societies that are ever present in them. But recently some authors have failed to encapsulate the meaning of a 'dystopia' and have thrown something into their book, an element of a dystopia or futuristic society, to draw readers in off the craze that the dystopia genre has become from the success of The Hunger Games. Although it does not have The Hunger Games's action-filled and thrilling plot, Teri Terry's debut Slated is one that encapsulates dystopia in its purest form, like George Orwell's 1984, of a reality that could well happen. It forces readers to debone and deconstruct their every belief of now and the future, and just like Kyla, their right to be the person they are and believe to be without the restrictions put on them by the controlled society in which they live. 
 Slated had perfect pacing, allowing me to glide through its pages and further allowing me to be immersed in Kyla's story of struggle and resistance against the society and government that has changed her. After all, Kyla is a Slated, someone who in a previous life has committed something terrible and who now is having a second chance at life at the cost of her memories being wiped and all that she had known previously... gone. New family, new name, new life. Always watched, always disciplined. Slating makes resistance that much harder, with the people who have undergone this treatment unable to use their voice to express their individual thought. But with their memories forcefully stolen and beginning anew unaware of who they are, they cannot. Terry has designed a sinister new world and government, and a protagonist that slowly but surely questions the silence and disappearances around her. 
 Terry's incorporation of science, in particular psychology and neurophysiology, to detail and explain Slating was something that I, someone who is studying psychology and psychophysiology, thoroughly enjoyed. It captivated me. It made me think 'What if?' and portrayed the brain as an item that government's can shape, alter, manipulate, wipe, or destroy depending on their desires and the society they wish to control. The government in Slated uses physical and medical means to control their world, to control the criminals and terrorists that attempt to change it, whereas other dystopias such as The Hunger Games or Divergent use conformity to govern the way in which ordinary people must live and ultimately survive. Dystopias are captivating stories, and it is our free minds today that can change the way in which we wish to live, far from the worlds that we read about in such a fascinating but raw genre. 
 Slated is the beginning of a captivating new series and the start of a new life for Kyla. I'm looking forward to where Terry develops the story next in the sequel Fractured, out in May 2013 in UK/AUS.