The Glitch. I saw this book around the bookernet and it seemed intriguing. Shelley Stone is a type-A executive to the extreme. She ran a company making a device called a Conch that's basically Google glasses but it's worn in the ear and tells you things (people's names, the weather, restaurant reviews) rather than showing them on a screen right in front of the eyes. Except people seem to like the Conch. She takes 2am conference calls, repeats various axioms to herself throughout the day, takes standing naps to maximize her time, keeps a note reminding her to "be likeable" because it's not something that comes naturally. I'm not saying I've known people just like her but I have seen (and worked with) people that could have inspired her, with the characteristics just dialed up to 11.

You may think that this is what the book will focus on BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE. Shelley meets a mysterious person who seems very, very interested in Conch who seems to keep showing up around Shelley and her family. Then a woman shows up who seems to be Shelley from the past. She looks like her, has her scar, and knows things about Shelley's past. And then there seem to be some issues with Conch that don't make sense.

Had the book been more of a satire of Shelley, I think I would have enjoyed it more. I only say this after the fact because otherwise, all of that other mystery and intrigue and sci fi-ness would draw my attention. Indeed it did when I read the description. But honestly, it didn't pan out the way I wanted. Not even the way I wanted, but in a way that was particularly interesting or that ultimately paid off.

I did really like the ridiculousness of the tech industry and Shelley's craziness, especially when she brings her executive style to her home. Because if there's one thing young children (she has 2) love, it's business jargon. And while Shelley isn't really the most likeable person, I did appreciate a female character that is allowed to prefer work to family. She doesn't hate her family but she loves her work and that's where she thrives.

Ultimately I liked the writing but felt like there were a lot of ideas going on here and many of which just didn't really work out.

Shelley Stone has it all: a career as the CEO of Conch, a cutting-edge wearable tech company; a handsome husband; two intelligent children; a household staff in a decadent home in Silicon Valley; a toned, tanned body. She power naps while standing in lines to maximize her time, routinely wakes at 2 a.m. for business calls and schedules meetings with her children for optimal bonding time. But from the opening pages of Elisabeth Cohen's debut novel, The Glitch, it is clear that this model is becoming unsustainable.

The temporary disappearance of Shelley's four-year-old daughter from a family vacation kicks off a series of strange and stranger events that pull down the carefully constructed life that Shelley has built. She meets a young woman with the same name and scar as herself, who seems to know everything about Shelley's childhood memories. Conch comes under threat. Her husband considers moving to Brazil with their children. As the world around her crumbles and Shelley, for the first time in her life, begins to question herself, The Glitch starts to feel like a fever dream, throwing Shelley a series of increasingly bizarre challenges that may or may not be real. Though some of the plot twists in Cohen's debut are confusing at best, it's easy enough to ignore these faults as Shelley's search for something--the truth? Her purpose? What it means to have it all?--builds to a startling crescendo. With wit, humor and heart, The Glitch reflects on the role of technology in our lives, the very essence of reality and what it means to be a woman (wife, mother and leader) in a male-dominated world.

When their daughter goes missing on a foreign beach, Shelley and her husband don't even get off of their phones to go find her until ten-twenty minutes later, that's when I knew I wasn't going to like this book, or these characters for that matter, but I still pushed through and tried to find the good in The Glitch by Elisabeth Cohen. The book wasn't all bad, but it honestly wasn't that great either. I felt like I had no idea where it was going, at first I thought it was a thriller or mystery, then it turned into almost a satire, and finally a science fiction book. Why? I honestly don't know, but I am not into this story what so ever.

Shelley is the CEO of Conch, which is a wearable device that connects to your ear and basically does everything you would want it to do, her husband, her kids and herself are on vacation when their four year old daughter walks off, they end up finding her at someones home, and that's just the beginning of all the things that are weird and straight up silly about this book.

I think that Shelley is supposed to be unlikable, and I'm alright with a protagonist that isn't likable, but I at least want to enjoy the story line if we are going that route, and this was just dumb. 

As the story unfolds, Shelley meets another woman with the same name and same scar, who tries to make her believe that she's her younger self coming to visit her. I just don't get it, is this book about the corporate world or is it about doppelgängers? I really can't care enough to figure it out.

Needless to say, I'm disappointed in this book. I give it 2 out of 5 stars. I received this book from Netgalley.

Im kind of on the fence with this one. Based on the description I was expecting a completely different book. I get that Shelly is supposed to be an annoying character that redeems herself in the end, but it felt like being trapped with annoying person fo way too long. I had to put the book down and read two others between this one because it wasn’t going anywhere. The writing itself is amazing. Elizabeth Cohen is great at putting words together beautifully. It’s what got me to come back and finish the book. The story didn’t actually get good for me until around 197 and then it was pretty good. I just wish there’d been more of that.

I'm on the fence with The Glitch. It's a little tech, some sci fi fantasy, a touch of chick lit and a lot of mid-life crisis wrapped up in the ghosts of the past like A Christmas Carol. That's a lot for one book and author to tackle. Elisabeth Cohen spends much of the first chapters establishing a complex layered character portrait of the heroine. Unfortunately she is surrounded by much less dimensional characters, including the character purporting to be her younger self. Confused yet? I certainly was. I felt that the premise was sharp and intriguing however the promise of the premise never quite came to fruition. I was entertained but not riveted by The Glitch.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

Shelley Stone is the CEO of Conch, a wearable device that can read your e-mails to you, offer suggestions, and much more. She wakes up at 3 AM, works 100 hours a week, and carefully schedules every minute of her life. While in Europe with her family, her daughter is “found” by a strange man, and then Shelley meets a young woman who appears to be herself at 19. From there, problems start to arise at work.

The blurb for this book called it “completely original, brainy, laugh-out-loud story”. It was fairly original, but I didn't find it brainy, and it didn't even make me laugh once. I suppose the humor was supposed to be how over the top she is about her work ethic, but it just didn't do it for me. I felt like there were large sections of the book that didn't really add to the story line. This book just didn't do it for me.

The first thing to note about The Glitch is the fact that none of it will be remotely amusing unless you have spent time in the corporate world. If you have not done so, you just won't get the story. Granted, Shelley will still be absurd in her mannerisms and thought processes, but anyone who has ever sat through any sort of corporate training will get many a chuckle about her pretentiousness whereas those who have not had the luxury will not get the absurdity.

The second thing to note about The Glitch is that it is a satire. Think Jane Austen but for the C-suite set. On the surface, nothing is amiss. Shelley seems perfectly normal in her musings, aspirations, and dedication to the various roles in her life. But just like in Austen's novels, the truth is not what is on the surface but what remains unspoken throughout the story.

The best part about The Glitch is how it takes all the corporate self-help advice, the buzz words and trends, the various training exercises, and psychological expertise and destroys it in the name of common sense. It is a bit like playing corporate bingo with Shelley as a human bingo card that already has every space blacked out. There is something delightful in seeing every single trend about open concepts, empowering your staff, work-life balance, collaboration, etc. modeled by one character.

The corporate world is not the only place to feel the bite of Ms. Cohen's wit. She also does something similar with raising children and the competitive area it has become. Through Shelley, Ms. Cohen's portrayal of parenting in the wealthy and mostly white world is a far cry from children being ripped away from their parents and put into detention centers, and it has nothing in common with parents who cannot afford to feed their children or struggle making ends meet. Whereas her business style is amusing, her parenting style, and that of her husband, is so extreme that it is a whole lot of pretentious and a wee bit embarrassing.

Just as Jane Austen is not for everyone, The Glitch is a novel for a subset of readers. While I would like to think the satire is so obvious that anyone can enjoy it, I suspect that is not the case and that only those with experience in management and business will truly enjoy it. The thing is we need a novel like The Glitch. We need it to reevaluate our priorities and to recognize the ridiculousness of certain corporate measures. We need it because to take the corporate world seriously is to fuel your frustration at a system that seems to only benefit the top one percent. We need it to be able to laugh in a world where it is becoming increasingly more difficult to find things about which to laugh. Thankfully, no matter how crazy the world gets, there are certain things in parenting and in corporate America which will not change, and The Glitch is there the mock it all.

An interesting read and not quite sure if I liked it or didn't like it. Still deciding about the narrative voice aspect of the book.

There are few segments of our current society as ripe for satire as the world of Silicon Valley. There’s a lot to unpack in the high-tech realm – lots of precepts and personalities and perceptions that beg to be looked upon by the satirist’s eye.

The latest author to take a swing at that particular target is Elisabeth Cohen, whose debut novel is “The Glitch” (Doubleday, $26.95). It’s the story of Shelly Stone, a tech CEO whose life is turned upside down by a series of events involving her lost daughter, a product crisis and a mysterious young woman who may or may not be a younger version of Shelly herself.

It’s also an at-times biting look at the stark realities of corporate life and what it means to be a woman in a position of power in a male-dominated industry. It’s about the sacrifices necessary to achieve at that high level … and whether those sacrifices ultimately prove worthwhile.

From the outside, Shelly Stone would appear to epitomize the notion of a woman “having it all.” She’s the CEO of a tech company called Conch, whose wearable interface product is on the verge of achieving mainstream success. She’s married to the ruggedly handsome Rafe, who also happens to be a prominent finance guy, and has two kids – a daughter named Nova and a son named Blazer. Work dominates her life, though she takes pride in finding time with her family whenever possible (which isn’t often).

Oh, and she was struck by lightning as a young woman, an event that she credits with dramatically altering the course of her life.

But when Shelly inadvertently loses track of Nova on an Italian beach, a bizarre sequence of events is set in motion. A strange man named Enrique finds Nova and returns her to Shelly, but there’s something off about his explanation as to how he happened upon the child. Conch is in the midst of negotiating a massive deal with a wireless charging company, but rumors are bubbling up about device malfunctions that are leading to dangerous – and perhaps even deadly – outcomes.

Then, a mystery woman pops into Shelly’s life – a woman who knows an awful lot about Shelly’s past and happens to look an awful lot like Shelly did 20 years ago.

What follows is Shelly’s attempt to navigate the difficult path laid before her. She has to figure out how to placate the board and move forward with the merger while also dealing with the potential fallout of Conch malfunctions becoming part of the larger news cycle. She has to contend with conflicts with Rafe’s job and a weirdly combative relationship with the nanny and the fact that this Enrique guy keeps popping up. And again – there’s a person who might actually be her from the past asking a lot of questions and making a lot of demands that Shelly doesn’t know if she should answer and/or meet.

Maybe the biggest chance taken by “The Glitch” is the sheer unlikability of the protagonist. It’s not easy to craft a compelling narrative around an off-putting central character, but Cohen makes Shelly engaging even as we might find her personality less than palatable. It’s a wonderfully effective parodic take; she’s the vision of what certain unenlightened types perceive when they try to conceptualize a female CEO – particularly a tech CEO.

It is Shelly’s voice that guides us through the story. We’re experiencing things through her eyes – eyes that are unapologetic in their beliefs and somewhat myopic in their ability to perceive flaws. Not that Shelly lacks self-awareness, exactly; it’s more that she’s mastered the ability to subvert her own doubts in service to her drive for success. There’s a clipped, off-center vibe to her, both in terms of her internal narrative and her interactions with those around her. Again – unlikable, yet compelling.

“The Glitch” also offers a delightful cracked-mirror view of Silicon Valley. The scenes and themes presented through Conch are probably the highlights of the story; Cohen does great work in illustrating the facile emptiness of such places even as our hero/narrator celebrates the very same qualities.

One could argue that the various thematic, tonal shifts – we get tech satire, a bit of family drama, possibly some sci-fi, a dash of empowerment – could have proven troublesome. Cohen deliberately keeps the readers off balance, unsure of just what sort of book they are reading. It’s the sort of choice that would likely be disastrous in the wrong hands, but here, it really works. That vague feeling of confusion never gets in the way of the overall story being told – it just adds another layer of enjoyment to the experience.

“The Glitch” is smart satire featuring a protagonist who is both unlikable and unforgettable – think for a second about how hard that is to pull off. And yet Elisabeth Cohen handles it with a deftness that belies the fact that this is a debut novel. When it’s all said and done, you might not like Shelly Stone, but you’ll almost certainly respect her.

So, when I first heard about The Glitch, I was all like - Wow. What cool idea for a story! This is going to be awesome. I need to get my hands on this one! And then I read it, and I was all like - WTF did I just read? Did someone slip me drugs? Did I miss something?

Shelley is like one of those Steve Jobs-esque corporate tech CEO robots who is basically all work and zero play. Her company is called Conch, and is sort of like a Siri for everyday life that clips onto your ear. Even Steve jobs seems like a wuss compared to Shelley. She's stiff, and brusque and her marriage and friendships are more of business arrangements it seems, as well as having children (Nova and Blazer?!? ummm what?), she has ZERO social life - and she likes it all this way. In fact she thrives on it.

The story starts out with Nova going missing on the beach and her and her husband CASUALLY STROLL around on the beach looking for her while they are both ON THE PHONE taking conference calls. I cannot even believe people like this might exist. Then a "glitch" happens with the Conch product and weirdness ensues. I'm all for weird books. I don't base a books review on unlikeable characters. In fact Shelley is written PERFECTLY. Elisabeth Cohen is apparently a technical writer by trade and she shines at developing Shelley as a character. Her writing is SO smart, and sharp and I LOVE the way she writes. I'm giving a slight pass since it's her first novel because the words are there - and they are exquisite! They just need some finesse in arranging the story better. But the themes here all ALL over the place. Kidnapping? Corporate espionage? Time travel? Lightning? Weird romantic feeling for coworkers and nannies? Women's empowerment? Technology? Work/Life/Mom balance? I had enough trouble with being in Shelley's head with her ramblings and descriptions - thoroughly written, and passionately descriptive - but the story itself just fell flat.

And the ending, just really unsatisfying. And a bit unbelievable knowing how hardcore Shelley was about most things - It was like she just conceded and gave up? Which seemed so out of character.. There were several times I was like "No WAY this type A personality would let this chick in her house!" and "Why isn't she calling the cops!" It was like you knew so precisely who Shelley was by the incredible character development of how robotic and precise her actions would be and then - what? Huh? What just happened? I'm still just really confused.

I hate when this happens. I find out about a book that sounds so ridiculously awesome that i rush out to find it wherever I can immediately. The description when I first heard of the book had a question in it like "What would you do if you met your younger self?" I want to read THAT book. That's what I thought I was reading and where it was going, but it turned into this whole other story that went somewhere else entirely. There was so much promise and potential and I'm pretty bummed. It wasn't worth all the hype I've been hearing.

Confession time: it had been a few weeks between reading the blurb and picking up the book, so I wasn't sure what to expect. And then I got confused. Was it chick-lit? Humor? A mystery?

Nope. None of these fit, precisely. What it is, really, is subtle satire.

Shelley Stone is an over-the-top, super Type-A CEO who has double-speak and lingo down to a art form - although it more along the lines of a black-velvet clown painting than a Degas. I say this because Shelley is, in a word, intolerable. You will roll-your-eyes, shout at her obliviousness to her kids, her snobbery, and her complete lack of touch with most people's reality - and her business lingo double-speak that sounds like a parody of EVERY obnoxious one-sided business call you've been subjected to in a public place.

She is maddening, and drove me insane. And I think the bottom line to whether you enjoy this book - or not - is IF you can see this as satire and not simply as a bad stereotype of a highly exaggerated type-A millennial. Really, the genius is in how completely absurd Shelley is.

Cohen has, however, wound enough of a mystery in this that she had me turning pages - even as I wanted to smack Shelley. Who was this younger version of Shelley Stone? She couldn't really have been brought her from the past...so was this a trick? And what WAS happening with her project, the Conch? And - lets face it - Shelley really was such an awful person that she really could only improve in character.

So yes, I really hated Shelley at the start - and in the middle - but by the end I had made some peace with her. I've given the book three and a half stars because I honestly still don't know if I loved it, or if it was because she was such a train wreck of a character, or if I just needed to finish it to figure out what the heck was going on.

And that is some genius right there on its own.

I was so excited to be able to try this ARC, especially with all the buzz surrounding this novel. Sadly, try as I might I just was not able to completely get into it. So can't fairly rate it.

This was a strange book. I couldn’t decide if I liked it or not. I for sure didn’t like Shelley who is the CEO of a tech company. I kept waiting for her to get a clue that life was about more than work. The book starts out with she and her husband, both on their phones about work, losing their daughter on the beach while they’re vacationing. I was like, are you kidding me? Neither of them can put the phone down to look for their DAUGHTER?

But, the book was interesting enough to finish. It was just strange but I wanted to see where the strange went.

A very interesting reading experience.

When I started reading The Glitch, I immediately thought that if someone decided to do a skit on Saturday Night Live (and this may have already happened but I'm usually too tired to stay up and watch) that was based around a parody of Sheryl Sandberg, Elisabeth Cohen's debut would provide the perfect script.

"I take my daughter to school myself. People are always surprised by this, that I do that. You know, some things are important and those are the things I make time for. I can’t drive the car myself, of course, because I have calls or I’m on my laptop, but I put my daughter in the car with me and I nudge her with my shoe when she gets too loud."

In this laugh-out-loud satire about a woman who is a CEO in the tech industry ("wearables"), Shelley Stone is a married mother of two (and fully acknowledges how thankful and fortunate she is for live-in childcare assistance) who seems to think she's balancing her life well; that is, until she is stumped by a young woman who appears to have striking similarities to the way Shelley was before the life-altering event that has caused her to become so focused and determined.

In addition to the undeniable humor and wit, I love that Cohen pokes fun at this notion of "having it all, " a la Sandberg's Lean In days, and Shelley Stone fully believes, during the early chapters of the novel, that she is fully engaged in all facets of her life; however, she slowly begins to realize and dolefully acknowledge that she's been absent in many ways.

"I had thought adulthood would be a series of viscerally felt triumphs, like the moment when a plane lifts off, and the stresses of our lives merely gnats in the turbines, but stress had turned out to be the airstream in which we flew."

In terms of its wit, satire and comedy, I would definitely recommend The Glitch to fans of novels like Crazy Rich Asians and The Nest; Shelley has some interesting quirks which also reminded me of The Rosie Project. You'll fly through this one and it has a thoughtful message; an extremely fun summer debut!

This was a fun read! I devoured it over the weekend and would love to read more by Elisabeth Cohen in the future. I will recommend this to all of my friends!

A high-powered executive at a critical career juncture meets a young woman claiming to be her younger self. What follows is a series of events that makes the executive question everything she thought she knew about her identity. Author Elisabeth Cohen offers readers a powerful protagonist in a lackluster story in her debut The Glitch.

Shelley Stone, CEO of the tech company Conch, may not have invented multi-tasking, but she certainly owns the concept. With her entire life planned down to the minute, her efficiency would put Mary Poppins to shame. While her first love is her work, she makes genuine efforts to be a good wife and mother. She’d just rather be in the office, surrounded by her employees, than at her daughter’s preschool handing out cupcakes.

Everything at Conch seems to be shooting for the stars. Shelley is thoroughly invested in the evolution of the wearable technology as well as retaining current customers. The unobtrusive, unnoticeable earpiece has acted as a personal assistant to millions of users, offering everything from weather alerts and introductions to other Conch users as well as reminders about important dates and alerts about personal health. Like other tech dreamers, Shelley won’t stop at anything until everyone owns a Conch. She relies on hers like she would on her right arm.

When she meets a young woman who the Conch says is also named Shelley Stone, the self-assured CEO finds herself in doubt for the first time in a long time. The 19-year-old almost convinces Shelley to believe she’s somehow the younger version of herself come to the future; almost, but not quite. That tiny gap acts as a crack in the solid veneer Shelley began building for herself after suffering from a freak accident. The lightning strike she underwent as a teenager changed Shelley irrevocably, or so she thought. Now, with this woman’s mysterious appearance in her life and Conch starting to suffer problems as well, Shelley begins to wonder whether it truly is possible to win at everything.

Author Elisabeth Cohen spends an inordinate amount of time building Shelley’s character. The result is a well-rounded, three-dimensional character in a two-dimensional, flat book. Shelley’s profile will confirm for those detractors of female executives that a woman can’t have it all, that she can’t possibly be a good wife and mother and run a Fortune 500 all equally well because somewhere, something goes very bad very fast.

Case in point: the book opens with Shelley’s daughter, Nova, disappearing from the beach for a short period of time while the family is on vacation. Another example comes later in the story when Shelley takes Nova to work for the morning and she can’t relate to Nova’s interest in her plastic horses. She’s hoping to influence Nova, to mold her in her own image.

In fact, for someone so brilliant at her job, she comes across as terribly obtuse when she meets the mysterious young woman who claims to be the young Shelley Stone. It’s disappointing to see that the real Shelley can’t use her extensive life experience to help her separate fact from fiction. Instead the meeting propels Shelley into a long period of introspection—as in, pages of it.

What follows, then, is a story where we see Shelley floundering, and the plot flounders with her. The husband who in the opening chapters seemed as career-driven as her does an about-face. Conch, the amazing tech that is supposed to be transforming Silicon Valley, starts to show signs of problems. Shelley herself starts to lose the self-assurance that makes her so attractive as a character in the first place.

Instead of a strong sprint to the finish, readers will spend too much time treading water waiting for the book to end. It’s a shame, too. Given the right kind of story, Shelley would have come out the winner she already is in her professional life.

The end sees Shelley doing an abrupt turn in her life, which comes across as neither believable nor satisfying. I recommend readers Bypass The Glitch by Elisabeth Cohen.

Idea behind the story was promising but the book was not well executed in my humble opinion. I tried so hard to like it but reading it was tedious.

This is an interesting book that hasn’t quite figured out what it wants to be. It was a little mom lit, a little Silicon Valley skewering, and a little bit of a mystery. I think it would have better succeeded if it had picked one genre rather than trying to do it all. The technical details reflect the author’s background as a technical writer and add realism to the sendup of Silicon Valley excess.

Shelley’s inner life is dreadful — she’s not a person with whom I would be friends — but she grows on me a little over time. But I still question the message conveyed by how her character was written, that you have to be as ruthless and calculating as she was created to be in order to succeed in the tech world. Or maybe I hope that was part of the exaggerated skewing of the scene. Either way, I’m conflicted.

The mystery and how it was solved was not something I thought was that well done, but I also don’t care about mystery plots that much in general. There’s a part I didn’t get, which would either require a spoiler alert or for me to reread it some more, and I don’t care enough to figure it out.

While I don’t think this was the best execution, I would read this author again, at least until I figured out whether having dreadful protagonists was her thing.

I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Ugh nope. I thought the premise of this one sounded so good! I loved the idea of a woman (Shelley Stone) meeting a younger version of her self. Maybe she would have a chance to change things up in her life. But nope, this book just floundered a lot for me. Probably because I don't know what this book was trying to be. It didn't make me laugh. There was some weirdness with Shelley and the nanny (like I think Shelley was attracted to her or something, so confused). And Shelley and her husband were odd, and I didn't really get their deal. This whole book made me feel like I had accidentally taking some mind altering drug. I kept saying, so would this be what it's like to read a book while high as hell?

"The Glitch" starts off with Shelley and her family (husband and two kids) on vacation in France. When their young daughter Nova (do not get me started on her full name, that was also weird) goes missing. Shelley is of course freaked, but when a random dude calls her up and says he has her kid, the whole book tips into weirdness central. I still don't get what that whole thing was about. I would have called a cop or whatever the name for a cop is in France. It just seemed like an odd way to hear about Shelley and her client who invented something called the Conch. No, I refuse to explain that to you. I want it out of my head.

The whole book just pings back and forth between Shelley and her hectic life and her meeting the younger version that she denies. I thought this would be more Freaky Friday or like that movie with Michael Keaton, Multiplicity, but nope.

I also didn't really care for Shelley. I don't know what was her deal, but she acted so unaffected by things I started to wonder if Cohen meant her to come across as possibly on the spectrum or what. I just felt baffled. Shelley has note cards on people, she talks to her children like they are peers at times which is odd.

I think that the book leaned too heavily into the sci-fi aspect of things. I just didn't care. Too many things kept happening for me to even figure out what the deal was.

There is zero development with other characters in this book so I wouldn't even bother with hoping there is something here besides Shelley that can intrigue you.

The ending had a forced resolution to me since I didn't believe it at all.

Tech-centric CEO-mother prefers work to marriage/family despite her claims that she is modern woman ‘having it all.’ Modest corporate plot does little for the book although the author dangles hints that there might be some science fiction involved. The main character is clearly on the spectrum and this tale could have been greatly improved if a sense of humor or gentleness, like the Rosie stories by Graeme Simsion, had been used. There just wasn’t much humor here; the main character was obnoxious.