The premise of the book is what interested me. If you could look one year into the future, would you? Unfortunately, this story didn’t deliver. It is full of tropes and stereotypes. And all the bad ones, at that.

A bitter African-American Stanford student and soon to be CEO of a tech start-up. A brilliant, if socially awkward, Indian immigrant. The story lacked cohesiveness and had an unresolved end. I wish I could say I enjoyed it, but I did not. The lack of character development made it difficult to relate to them or to feel any emotion towards them.

Thank you to Net Galley and Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine for the ARC in exchange for my review.

This is YA fiction written in the form of short burst emails and text messages. Which may be a little hard to get used to at first but stick with it. This book is a look into what technology can do if we aren't careful.

I've read books in this style before, using letters, e-mails, texts and other communications. I find that although it's interesting, it can be disjointed and distracting. I found it difficult to get a good feel for the characters so there wasn't as much connection as I'd have liked. The concept is original and appealing, I really liked the build up and tension, but overall it was a bit of a slog for me.

The Future Is Yours was an enjoyable read, but the ending was a tad predictable. No spoilers, but everything you could imagine about a startup team that designs a computer which can predict the future. I was totally entertained and understood the tech and the characters easily. I look forward to the next book this author, Dan Frey, makes available.

Good Story. Interesting Execution.

3 out of 5 stars
This is going to be a difficult one to pin down because I simultaneously liked it and had some trouble with it. So, I’ll try and be as honest as I can be without spoiling anything.

The Future Is Yours was told from a really interesting point of view. It bounces back and forth between a lot of characters, which doesn’t bother me. More so, it seems to be told from the point of view of different communication between and to the main characters. Some examples are, they are in a hearing, and it’s the recordings from those hearings that we hear. Or, it’s emails back and forth from the characters. The only time we really get an insight into the “inner mind” of any character is when they are writing an email draft that doesn’t get sent. Now, saying this, it’s a cool idea on paper, but the execution (yes, I think Frey pulled it off) left me wanting something else from the book. Every time I thought we were going to get some more info or some insight into something – it never came because it wasn’t part of the “public record” of the case.

Now, that out of the way, the premise of the story was fascinating. I thought that Frey did a good job giving us something that was unique and something I’ve never read about before. Sure, it’s a “time travel” book, but what travels through time is just the information. And honestly, when they were setting up the bylaws of how to use the devices – I’m surprised that Frey didn’t have one of the characters call out Biff from Back to the Future II and what happens when he knows all the sports scores (or in their case, stock prices). Instead, they just talked about how they would be found out by the SEC or the government in some way.

I also have to say that the ending was not what I expected. I don’t think I hated it and it didn’t leave a bad taste in my mouth, it was just completely unexpected. It’s been a few days and I still don’t know how I feel about it.

Overall, the full cast performance was great. A few times I think they could have removed some of the descriptors before the character started talking, but I’m sure others would have an issue with that. The story was interesting and seeing it’s in development into an HBO Max series – I’m intrigued. Because in TV, the things that bothered me about the book, I think I’d find interesting in a show.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine & Del Rey for my copy of The Future is Yours by Dan Frey in exchange for an honest review. It published February 9, 2021.
I just have to say, as soon as I heard about this premise, I knew I had to read this book, and I am so glad I did! I can see why it appeals to fans of Refersion, and I could wager to go as far to say that fans of Sleeping Giants would also enjoy it, specifically for the format of this book.
I love books told in a multimedia format, when done well, which I think this was successful. I enjoyed the various transcripts, e-mails, text messages, etc. as a fresh way to tell the story.
And what a story! Although, as soon as certain things were hinted, I was pretty sure I knew the outcome, (or at least parts of it), it didn't detract from the enjoyment of getting there. I think Frey does a great job developing certain characters and foreshadowing just enough to make you guess, but not enough to definitively call it.
My only gripe with this is that there is R-rated language threaded throughout the entire book, and I understand that most people don't care about that, but I am one of those people, for better or worse. Otherwise, I think the use of language was superb, as was the story-telling, and the tech start-up jargon, explained in a way that I could understand what was going on.
Trigger Warning: mention of thoughts of self-harm.

A version of this review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness and is republished here with permission.

Dan Frey (The Retreat) does a bang-up job imagining a scenario in which computers can communicate with their future selves and the impact that could have on society on a variety of levels. Cleverly told entirely via documentation (e-mails, blog posts, texts, reports, etc.) to avoid spoilers,
The Future Is Yours is an "opposites attract" tale of friendship set in the thought-provoking and cutthroat world of technology.

Ben Boyce, a confident connection-maker with a gift for wooing venture capitalists, and Adhvan "Adhi" Chaudry, an intellectual genius with woeful people skills, become best friends while rooming together at Stanford University. The story begins with an e-mail sent by Ben to Adhi from a year in the future--immediately proving Stanford whiffed by not backing Adhi's Ph.D. thesis proposing communication with the future using quantum computing.

The engrossing road from college to rolling out their product, a computer-type unit called The Future, is centered around the transcript of a 2021 congressional hearing where the legality of The Future is to be decided. Despite a subpoena, Adhi is mysteriously absent from the hearing. Frey ups the suspense by putting limitations on The Future: it can see only into a one-year future window, to a reality that cannot be altered.
Unsurprisingly, data from The Future becomes problematic. As Adhi struggles with morality issues, Ben drives passionately ahead, their friendship, relationships and the future of the world at risk. Frey's work as a screenwriter shines through in form and substance in this gripping work of science fiction

This story is told entirely through emails, texts, blogs, and transcripts, with newspaper articles from the future scattered throughout and this format is one I really do not enjoy. That being said, the story did move along quickly and kept me interested. Two friends develop a computer that can connect with the future and all the positive and negatives that go along with it. An interesting premise that makes you think "how much do you really want to know about your future?".

This was such an interesting story concept! The entire story is told through text based conversations (emails, tweets, newspaper articles, blogs, etc). It really made the story fly by, but it also created an interesting way to tell the story! Overall, I was pleased with this one! I enjoyed the characters, however, I did feel a bit bogged down in a lot of fighting and spats between characters. I did like who they were, and found them to be quite real.
For a sci-fi novel, this probably focused a bit too much on the people. I would have liked to see some broader views of the impact of this.

I think if you enjoy sci-fi this one will grab your attention the whole way through!!

The Future is Yours, an interesting book about two friends that develop a time machine of sorts and try to sell it to consumers with all the hardships in between. While the big picture of the story is interesting, none of the characters horrible, the format of the story being Emails, Texts, Letters, and Transcripts. This is my main issue with the book, not that the story is lacking. We should all know by now that you can't get 100% of what someone is saying without tone or body language. Which is important to me, having that inside view of what the characters are thinking as well. That is part of the mystery of the story, besides how did they get to the point they were at in the beginning. It does leave you wondering, what's really happening here. The book does explain everything in due time, which I appreciated . All in all a solid book.

Great premise and story. I enjoyed the format of it being in e-mail, text or article form. The story was very originally. The end felt kind of rushed but all in all it was a very entertaining story.

The Future is Yours, written in past text, emails, and juxtaposed with current trial testimony takes you on a journey of two college roommates whom embark upon a technology guaranteed to help you see your future. Adhi is the brains behind the computer that allows you to glimpse one year into the future using quantum entanglement. But it is Ben, driven by the dream of becoming a billionaire who uses his charms to find investors for this product. The story is about how the technology plays with ethics, politics, and two friends relationship.

The Future is Yours is a fresh and fascinating spin on time travel that is intriguing to read. Even though the format is choppy, the characters, the stage, and the plotlines are extremely well developed.

This was a very quick read once you got going. I'm going to say it was similar to Dark Matter, but not as suspenseful. The author is a screenwriter so everything is written in emails, texts and memos etc which made it v interesting. I recommend it!

I received a copy of this story from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I love stories that explore time travel so this was on my reading short list. And it definitely delivered. I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I understood all the science and theories woven through this plot. There are some very heady concepts within these pages and I stopped reading at one point to do some research, falling into a science vortex. It was fun!

Please don't be put off by the time travel and the science. Keeping track of the timeline is not hard because it isn't time travel in the traditional sense. It's more like a computer doing a data query on a future version of itself. It was unique and certainly captured my attention. I had no idea how it was going to end.

The reason I didn't give it more stars is because I don't think this is the right medium for this story. I'm going to say something I never thought I'd say: this would make a better movie or TV show.

The style it was told in - found documents, emails, transcripts, and text messages - while interesting, meant the character interactions we the readers saw were a little flat. There was plenty of tension to keep the story moving but I think we missed out on a lot of the nuance of more subtle emotions that we would be able to see on a screen. The potential is there. It exists and when I stopped reading and envisioned it as a movie or TV show, I could see those quiet moments. The visual medium would elevate and enhance this story. And then of course I get to the end of the book and see that the author is a screenwriter and it all makes sense.

I recommend this to any and all science-fiction fans!

this wasn't my type of genre and so I honestly found it to be a bit boring. I just couldn't keep up/stay interested in the story. So sorry!

I wanted to love this, but it was trying too hard to be too many things. Tech squabbles, neat SF/speculative creative innovation, a ~designed~ novel full of the internet but for all that design-y wow, it's still somehow less full than something like Patricia Lockwood's book or A.E. Osworth's. I felt the same disappointment I did after watching DEVS.

This was a fast-paced sci-fi book that posited the potential impacts of technological developments that could predict the near-future. In this case, one very smart dude named Adhi develops a technology that can be used to search for events one year in the future, and his friend Ben helps him build a company around this idea and begin marketing it. It addresses all of the typical predicted pitfalls of future forecasting, most notably, as our two main characters attempt to test whether the future can be changed once it has been predicted. The story was a wild ride and a quick read. It's also told as a modern epistolary novel (in the form of texts, emails, and records from a Congressional hearing), which helps keep the pace up while also keeping the reader guessing. The Congressional hearing is taking place in the present day and the emails, texts, and other items are being introduced as flashbacks, but also as evidence for the hearing. There's a mystery at the heart of everything and I really liked how the book dealt with the practical and emotional sides of this oft-written sci-fi concept. I rated this one 4 stars, and other than some mild language, I would widely recommend this title for sci-fi fans.

Told through a series of compiled emails, texts, articles, tweets, and other official documents, The Future is Yours by Dan Frey is a fast, fun read. I used to be wholly uninterested in stories told in non-traditional formats like this (and if that makes me sound like a bit of a book snob, it was partly that and partly just having to get my weird brain/attention span used to it), but the more I read them, the more I realize that when done well and for the right reasons, they are just as compelling as a traditional narrative. And I will say, it is done very well and for all the right reasons in this book.

Ben Boyce and Ahdi Chaudry are college BFFs who join forces to launch “The Future,” a computer that can connect to the internet one year into the future. The explanation of how goes way over my head, but the way Ahdi describes the technology was enough to convince me. Of course this revolutionary tech comes with moral and ethical dilemmas and the ramifications of this tech seems to be making the future look bleeker and bleeker by the day.

While Ben and Ahdi’s character arcs were pretty predictable from start to finish, it didn’t really matter. It’s sort of a tech startup tale as old as time, even for someone like myself with very limited familiarity with it (shoutout to all the Theranos references). It was still a fun read with a couple of surprises that had me saying “oh, shit” outloud and scaring my dog. It was like Blake Crouch-lite, and that’s not a dig. It raised a lot of interesting questions about the sometimes-seemingly ever changing leaps and bounds of technology and what that means for humanity. It just never really dug into any of the characters in a meaningful way to let the reader really care about any of them. Except for those Tumblr blog posts, which were a DELIGHT (the one about vampires was *chef’s kiss*). All in all, this was a compelling and fun read that doesn’t require too much investment and still gives you a pretty decent reader payment.

The protagonists' diversity felt secondary. While I enjoyed the format, the dialogue was troublesome for me to buy into. But a fun time travel jaunt.

The Future is Yours follow best friends Adhi Chaudry and Ben Boyce as they invent and pitch a type of computer that can speak to itself one year in the future. As they begin to prepare the machine, called The Future 1.0, for mass consumption, the moral and ethical implications of what bringing a time machine into the world are brought up.

To be fair, I do not understand the science in this in the slightest. I can't comment if it's possible or totally unrealistic. To my uneducated brain, it sounds plausible and so I was able to comfortably suspend my disbelief for the story. The best part about this is the way that it is told. It is told in an archival fashion through emails, texts, Tweets, Tumblr posts, newspaper articles, government documents, and other various multimedia. It makes the story very fast-paced and easy to digest, like you're reading it unravel on social media rather than in a book. It was a format I greatly enjoyed.

As for the ending (which I will not spoil), I understand the issues others have had with it, but I think it made total sense given the nature of the rest of the book.