Book Reviews, NetGalley Reviews, Reviews by Ariel

Future Shock by Elizabeth Briggs | Early #Review

I received this book for free from the mentioned source in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book nor the content of my review.



Future Shock by Elizabeth Briggs | Early #ReviewFuture Shock by Elizabeth Briggs
Published by: Albert Whitman & Company on April 1st 2016
Genres: Science Fiction, Time Travel, YA
Pages: 225
Format: eARC
Source: NetGalley

View on: Goodreads
Grab it: Amazon

Review Score:
About the Book:

Elena Martinez has hidden her eidetic memory all her life--or so she thinks. When powerful tech giant Aether Corporation selects her for a top-secret project, she can't say no. All she has to do is participate in a trip to the future to bring back data, and she'll be set for life.

Elena joins a team of four other teens with special skills, including Adam, a science prodigy with his own reason for being there. But when the time travelers arrive in the future, something goes wrong and they break the only rule they were given: do not look into their own fates.

Now they have twenty-four hours to get back to the present and find a way to stop a seemingly inevitable future from unfolding. With time running out and deadly secrets uncovered, Elena must use her eidetic memory, street smarts, and a growing trust in Adam to save her new friends and herself.

 

 

 

 

The Review Banner

 

Future Shock is the first YA novel from author Elizabeth Briggs.  A time travel mystery about a group of foster kids, Future Shock is a fast paced novel that will suck you in and keep you guessing until the very end.

 

Elena Martinez is a 17-year-old foster kid with plenty of tattoos and an eidetic memory, meaning she has perfect recall.  Having been in the foster system since she was about 7 or 8, Elena has never pictured much of a future for herself.  She’s trying to find a job so she won’t be completely destitute when she ages out of the foster system, but no one wants to hire a Mexican teenager with too many tattoos.  So it came as a surprise to her when a representative from Aether Corporation offers her a lot of money to help with a simple research project.  Only when she accepts and signs a contract does she discover she’s being sent ten years into the future.

 

The beginning is a little slow, but as soon as Aether Corporation gets involved and the plot gets rolling a little, it’s close to impossible to put this book down.  Everything is really fast paced and exciting, and the characters are great.  Along with Elena we have three other foster kids, Chris, Trent, and Zoe, and teenage scientific genius, Adam.  I really enjoyed Elena as a protagonist.  She’s a great fighter, but she tends to avoid them unless another person is getting picked on.  She’s got her own issues to deal with, mostly the fear that she’s going to turn out exactly like her father, currently in prison.  Trent and Chris were really great once Elena got to know them and we got to see that they’re more than just bullies.  They’re just kids who were hardened by the foster care system and who want better for themselves, which is understandable.  Zoe I had a harder time with.  I liked her well enough, but it felt like her personality didn’t really stay consistent throughout the novel.  At times she was incredibly shy, often hiding or cowering, and other times she was completely confident.  I wouldn’t have such a problem with it if she would have progressively became more confident, but she flip-flopped around throughout the book and it was a little annoying.  I wanted to like Adam, but I really spent most of my time wary of him.  I didn’t think he was a bad guy necessarily, but I didn’t trust him.

 

The book is split into three parts: present, past, and present again, but there aren’t really any chapters other than this which was a little difficult for me.  Part of the reason I had a hard time putting this book down was because it was so good, which is great, but the other part of it is that there wasn’t ever a really good stopping point.  Everything was really action packed and flowed really nice, but I prefer having a good pause moment to kind of take a break and go eat a snack or stretch my legs.

 

There are plenty of twists and turns throughout the book, which was fantastic.  I can’t really say much about them, even the ones that happen early on in the book, without spoiling anything, but I will say they will keep you hooked page after page.

 

I give Future Shock 4 out of 5 controllers.  It was a really great book, and I flew through it, but I wish it had been broken up into a few more parts or chapters.

 

 
 

My Rating


 

rate 4

Ariel sig