Review: Mind Games

I knew I wanted to read Mind Games as soon as I heard about it. I mean stealing memories? What a cool concept!

Arden Varga attends a school for geniuses founded by her parents. When she’s not in class working on her senior thesis project, she can be found selling memories to her classmates ranging from studying for exams to winning homecoming queen at a normal high school. She’s able to hack into HiveMind, her father’s invention, and access the wide variety of memories of everyone hooked up to it. It’s all fun and games until she sees a student that she doesn’t recognize…that apparently is in one of her classes. It gets more confusing when the boy she talks to doesn’t have any memories at all before waking up that morning.

As Arden tries to figure out what’s wrong with her memory and with Sebastian’s, she discovers that not only does she not remember who Sebastian is, apparently everyone around her is missing any memory of the two of them together. As she’s in class, her teacher briefly explains that Sebastian and her have partnered together for their senior project…that Arden has no recollection of and all of her notes on have been destroyed. Shana Silver drives the suspense as Arden and Sebastian race against time to figure out what their project was and find a way to regain their memories. The pacing is kept fast, even when Adren needs to rehash what has happened since the hacker erased her memories in real time.

I loved the stealing memories aspect as it is such an interesting concept to think about. It was tough watching Arden loose certain memories for good and thinking about what that means. One of my favorite parts was when Arden was able to hack into the system and retrieve a few of her encrypted memories. These memories are specially formatted in the book and are told as though they are being played in reverse. I loved finding these parts and the major reveals they contained. Another cool part was the focus on STEM! This is a school for science geniuses and you can definitely tell it. The technology and classes featured are remarkable and Arden is such a talented hacker.

Overall, Mind Games is a fast-paced sci-fi thriller that will keep you guessing until the final chapters. I’m excited to see what Shana Silver has in store for the future and have already added her next novel to my TBR.

My Rating:

*This ARC was provided to me by the publisher through Xpresso Book Tours in exchange for an honest review.*

About Mind Games

Release Date: September 27, 2019
Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble

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?

About Shana Silver

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