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

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.

Intriguing and Entertaining

I received this book for free. I am voluntarily posting this review and any opinions expressed herein are my own.

While this book is geared more towards a YA audience, it can be enjoyed by an older generation as well. In today's high tech world, the theme of this book - the ability to delete people's memories through technology - is very appropriate. I really liked the MC Lucy - who is a bit of a technophobe and a rebel in refusing to wear "Spex" like everyone else, allowing her to have the most clarity in what is actually happening. Of course, there is the underlying philosophical argument to be made here as well - as it relates to technology taking over our world, our thoughts [and don't our thoughts/memories create who we are so if they are deleted - who are we really?], and monitoring our activities. Overall, I found the characters to be well-developed; the story intriguing; and the writing to be very entertaining.

The narrator, Abby Anderson, has a very pleasant voice and did a nice job. On the down side, several times, phrases/sentences were repeated - not caught in quality control.

A scary thought

A scary thing to have your memories erased. Lucy was desperately trying to run from the one hacking minds. She really liked Marco and with with his help she hoped to put an end to it but an accident happened. Lucy's memories were gone & Marco died. Lucy had quite an adventure after that. A great story. The author created some great characters with a great narrator.

creepy!

scared the living crap out of me and I loved every minute of it 😂

Engaging but a bit confusing

I liked the premise, the characters, the sciency bits, and even the plot.

But it is sort of non linear. You jump from one perspective to another, and so many of the people lose their memories that weird stuff seems to happen for no reason... because the characters have an altered view of history compared to the reader.

I enjoyed it well enough, but I found parts of it hard to follow. Maybe you need to pay more attention, or maybe it’s harder to listen than read this one?

I received this audiobook for free in exchange for a review.

Interesting story

This was an interesting story. I didn't hate it but I didn't love it. I felt the narrator made the voice of Lucy sound like a 12 year old kid instead of the 18 and 19 year old she was. I found that a bit annoying to listen to. The concept of the story was an interesting idea. I felt the characters lacked some depth as did some of the story line. There weren't any real big twists and some of the story felt a little repetitious. It had a pretty good ending and didn't leave the story hanging with too many unanswered questions. Who knows, this could be a glimpse of what the future holds.

I received an Audiobook copy from StoryOrigin for an honest review.

Light adventure with a touch of romance and SciFi

This was a great light read with an intriguing plot and a touch of SciFi. The narration was tolerable, pleasant, and suitable for the type of story this is. I typically like a denser SciFi, but this was a nice little dessert. And that’s not to denigrate it. There’s absolutely a perfect audience for this book and making good books of this kind is difficult. It’s a balancing act of keeping the audience interested and titillated without compromising a sweet story.