Mind Games
Shana Silver
Published by Swoon Reads August 27th 2019
Blog Tour arranged by
Rating: 3*
This is the first ever blog tour I've taken part in. I signed up to receive a few emails and this was the first one that caught my eye because it reminded me of the kind of books my boyfriend read and thought it would be interesting to read outside of my familiar genres.
Mind Games definitely held my interest; set in a future world where technology has advanced and a school is beta-testing a system that uploads and stores your memories online. We follow Arden, as she wakes up remembering nothing about an important final school project, which she is meant to present to a board that could pay for it to be made and produced; a project which could save lives. It touched on the ethics of storing and altering memories and personalities, but it could have been touched on a bit more.
The concept overall was really interesting and allowed the author to play a lot with her plot. Arden would discover something about the hacker but then wake up the next day forgetting what she'd discovered as they took more of her memories, meaning as a reader I was holding on to more information than she was.
When I was first reading it, the focus is a lot on the technology and loss of project side, so the blurb's focus on her business selling stolen memories and her boyfriend was confusing; but that came in later. Her relationship with Sebastian was definitely a weird one. I don't want to spoil anything so I'll let you discover what I mean here.
My main issue was with her friend. I just didn't like her; she was whiny and most of the time came across as a bit desperate to be a part of everything. As she became more key to the plot, her character made less and less sense.
I think I enjoyed the middle bit most; the start was confusing, as it didn't immediately world-build and position us within this new technologically advanced school, and the ending became more cliche. The middle though, that focused on Arden and her talent with computers, trying to stay one step ahead of the hacker when she doesn't know who it is or what they want, that kept me on the edge of my seat.
See below the full blurb, links to buy, and a US giveaway for a copy upon release tomorrow. Good Luck!
A teen programmer at a school for geniuses must join forces with a boy she can’t remember to stop a hacker from deleting their memories in Shana Silver’s action-packed YA debut, Mind Games.
Arden sells memories. Whether it’s becoming homecoming queen or studying for that all important test, Arden can hack into a classmate’s memories and upload the experience for you just as if you’d lived it yourself. Business is great, right up until the day Arden whites out, losing fifteen minutes of her life and all her memories of the boy across the school yard. The boy her friends assure her she’s had a crush on for years.
Arden realizes that her own memories have been hacked, but they haven’t just been stolen and shared… they’ve been removed. And she’s not the only one: her mysterious crush, Sebastian, has lost ALL of his memories. But how can they find someone who has the power to make them forget everything they’ve learned?