Deleted

By: Ruth Mitchell

Narrated by: Abby Anderson

Three things happen when technophobe Lucy learns to mindhack: Her brilliant crush becomes her boyfriend, they solve small crimes, and she's deleted from his memory — and everyone else's.

Now the only person looking for the college freshman is a mysterious young hacker who erases memories for profit. If he finds her, he will wipe out her memories — or worse. If Lucy doesn't find him and stop him, no one will know that minds can be hacked and lives rewritten.

©2020 Ruth Mitchell (P)2020 Immortal Works

High Stakes Dystopian Read

In Deleted, we are transported into the future where wearing "Specs" to make your life easier is all the rage. But Lucy isn't buying into this new technological fad, despite the fact that her new love interest Marco is big into technology. She's much more in tune with the philosophical, which turns out to be a good thing. This book is a fast-paced thriller with hints of romance. What makes this one unique is one of the MCs has the ability to erase memories. So we have characters losing their entire memory and sense of identity. This was a pulse-pounding read, but also had a moral aspect infused. It's great for anyone who enjoys a more sci-fi, dystopian read.

Gripping, Engaging, Delightful Listen!

I truly enjoyed listening to this book! Once I got started it didn’t take long to finish. Within 24 hours I managed to make my way through it. The characters are well thought out and I loved the opening quotes for each chapter. My only complaint was the ending *- spoiler alert- * It made me uncomfortable that someone who was kidnapped, tricked, bound, etc. ends up becoming friends with the person who abused her. I’m all about forgiveness- but if it would have been my daughter I wouldn’t have wanted her to continue working with someone who had done the things he did. I think that not deleting his memories was enough grace and forgiveness. The continued association with someone capable of removing parts of someone’s life intentionally just didn’t sit well with me. I would still highly recommend this book- it was well written and delightful to listen to. I was drawn in and was eager to watch the story unfold. And the poet and his ramblings were some of my favorite parts.

GOOD READ!

I enjoyed it! This book was full of action, drama and suspense. The narration was good and kept me entertained! The author did a good job with the character builds and plot. This was my first book by this author but definitely not my last! I look forward to reading more books from this author! I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

Not cyberpunk as I expected

This novel is set in the near future. Everyone, but Lucy and old people, wears specs. Specs are a piece of technology that gives their wearer access to what we would know as the cloud or internet, as it happens today with smartphones. A few have found that specs can be hacked to alter people’s memories, and Nick has made a living out of that. But he is now looking for Lucy, because she witnessed a crime committed by him, and her memories cannot be altered, but she can be deleted from other people’s memories.

I found the plot very interesting but it led me to expect a cyberpunk story, not a love triangle for young adults. There were interesting bits of philosophy, and the flashbacks and flashforwards me the story more dynamic. This did not work for some people but I think it was an interesting way of showcasing the events.

One of my main problems is that I was not able to relate to any of the characters. Lucy likable enough, but her fixation in not wearing specs felt a fit forced. Her reason was that she wanted to see the world without filters, which matches the story at hand, but a similar argument could be made about nowadays technology, and I believe we must learn how to use it properly, not just avoid it altogether. This moral messages and some others rubbed me off the wrong way, I guess. There was also abundance of religious talk, and Lucy was, of course, a model to follow here. She was so perfect that she was almost unreal. I also do not care about religion, so I avoid this topic in books in general, especially in science-fiction. Religion just does not fit in there for me.

I missed some background regarding the characters and some more world-building. We are thrown into Lucy’s story without any kind of information. She is on the campus with a friend, and she studies philosophy, but we know nothing about her daily life or how she looks like.

Abby Anderson delivered an okay narration, but there were issues that we often find in unexperienced narrators. On three occasions throughout the audiobook there are repeated sentences, and there were several volume changes. Her character interpretations were a bit cold, especially Marco. He sounded too much matter of fact all the time, no matter how grave the situation was, and Nick’s voice seemed like an old man’s.

It was an okay book but geared more towards a young adult public. I expected a more hard science fiction focus, maybe cyberpunk, but this was just not it.

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Intriguing story that is great for teens too

A good story that gets you invested in the characters. The plot was well developed. It was a book that I would love to sit and read with my teenagers. Lots of action and romance.