i received a review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. all opinions below are my own.

yes, yes – another blog tour! there are so many coming releases i’m excited for, and i signed up for all of their blog tours just so i can get my hands on their arcs and give them the love they deserve. the mind games blog tour is organized by xpresso book tours and i’d like to thank them for letting me participate (and for being so tolerant when i missed my originally scheduled tour stop because i was feeling unwell)!

Mind Games by Shana Silver

Arden sells memories. Whether it’s the 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 15 minutes of her life and all her memories of the hot boy across the school yard. The hot 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 deleted. And she’s not the only one, the hot stranger, Sebastian, has lost ALL of his memories. But how can they find someone with the power to make them forget everything they’ve learned?

there are spoilers in this review. to view them, highlight the concealed text.

mind games was amazing. scratch that, it was perfect.

to be honest, i was skeptical about this book at first because sci-fi from swoon reads? what the actual heck. but the idea of memory hacking intrigued me, and i immediately sent in my application for the blog tour.

this book was everything i hoped for and more – lots of amazing and mindblowing science and coding facts, lovable protagonists, and packed action.

the world-building was interesting, and easy to understand. hivemind is arden’s father’s invention, and it is a system which stores people’s memories in binary code, and they can be accessed anytime using a computer, similar to what hideo tanaka created in warcross. it is being beta-tested by students at the elite science high school arden goes to before it gets released to the world, and some of them have figured out ways to hack into the system.

the mystery was also one of my favorite things about this book. i tried so hard to pick up clues myself along the story and piece them together to find out the culprit behind sebastian and arden’s vanishing memories, but oh my goodness, i failed so hard. and i totally did not expect that huge plot twist at the end. this book is full of sharp turns and surprises.

on top of that, the romance was beautiful. i loved seeing sebastian and arden slowly fall for and support each other amidst the chaos and memory deletions. it’s heartwarming reading the parts where they try their best to overcome the difficulties together. and the press conference scene gave me literal goosebumps.

the only thing that bothered me was how annoying arden’s best friend zoey was. she’s so darn noisy and dramatic and when she revealed herself to be the villain? I KNEW SHE WAS EVIL SOMEHOW.

all in all, mind games is an absolutely fantastic debut novel and i can’t wait to read more of the author’s work! i highly recommend the novel to fans of the warcross books. if coding, hacking and romance is your thing, this one’s for you!

trigger warnings: self harm

GIVEAWAY (US ONLY)

win a print copy of mind games ; this giveaway ends on 5 september. enter here.

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have you read mind games? what did you think? do you have a favorite sci-fi novel? let me know in the comments!