Book Review: Glitch by Heather Anastasiu

Image (c) St. Martin's Press

Glitch (Glitch #1) by Heather Anastasiu
Release Date: August 7th, 2012
Book Format: Library book
Rating: Two stars

In the Community, there is no more pain or war. Implanted computer chips have wiped humanity clean of destructive emotions, and thoughts are replaced by a feed from the Link network.

When Zoe starts to malfunction (or “glitch”), she suddenly begins having her own thoughts, feelings, and identity. Any anomalies must be immediately reported and repaired, but Zoe has a secret so dark it will mean certain deactivation if she is caught: her glitches have given her uncontrollable telekinetic powers.

As Zoe struggles to control her abilities and stay hidden, she meets other glitchers including Max, who can disguise his appearance, and Adrien, who has visions of the future. Both boys introduce Zoe to feelings that are entirely new. Together, this growing band of glitchers must find a way to free themselves from the controlling hands of the Community before they’re caught and deactivated, or worse.

In this action-packed debut, Glitch begins an exciting new young adult trilogy.

Maybe I've been reading too many dystopian books and I might just be getting tired of them. It doesn't make most of these issues I found in this book any less irritating.

Alright. We follow this girl, Zoey, who lives underground and lived her life completely emotionless due to having a chip in the back of her neck. She's not the only one- the community that she lives in all don the same chip, being taught that emotions are unnecessary and that everyone should focus only on logic and not on feeling/ intuition. These chips monitor them and their heart ratings which determine if a person is an anomaly or not (Similar to another book I read recently- Anomaly, almost ironically enough). This is something that Zoey fears cause she knows she's been glitching a lot lately- something that shouldn't be happening. She shouldn't be feeling anything and she shouldn't be seeing color either. If anyone catches her, she'll be marked for deactivation for sure. After all, a Glitcher is a bad thing to be.

We slowly discover that she isn't alone. It was after this moment that everything just started going way downhill for me.

Adrien finds her, claims he saw her in a vision and encourages her to go up on into the surface. She almost dies cause of allergies (or something, it wasn't fully explained) and after his mother's logical explanation (and Adrien's... not so logical excuse), they return her back with her memories erased. Max enters the picture, claiming he's glitched, and instead of being Zoe's study buddy he starts becoming incredibly abusive both vocally and emotionally. Adrien tries to help Zoe find other glitchers and, still, Max keeps being an ass. That's pretty much it the rest of the book- a back and forth yo-yo between the two and Max just kept making me want to throw this book out of the window.

I give Zoe props though- at least she knows something is up, but overall she's still convinced that whatever Max says to her and when she disagrees with him she's convinced that it's all her fault that he's mad. Not Max's fault, no- completely her fault.

This book has a good premises, as far as dystopian books go. I can see this becoming a good book had it actually concentrated on the storyline more than the 'love-triangle' (which was never a love triangle in the first place since one of them were incredibly abusive). There's so much more that could have been explored but, honestly, after a while I found myself confused when the characters ran into other people who were emotionless. There was so much focus on the three characters who used their emotions a lot that I'm honestly surprised that they weren't caught earlier. I'm just really incredibly disappointed.

I just didn't like this book. All it mostly gave me was a headache. I can't, in my right mind, recommend this. Had this focused on the actual story and the backstory behind why people now have chips in the back of their neck and what lead up to it, it would make up for all the love-triangle-ness. Almost. I would like to think, in a better world, there would have been less of that in this book... and less abusive people.

Originally posted and shared on January 30th 2014.