I read science fiction very rarely, but this one was calling my name.

Starting off with a bang… uh.. plane crash, we meet a group of people who’ve created an AI startup as they find themselves stranded on an island. Luckily they find a state of the art house, fully stocked and fully abandoned…

This was smart people doing really, ridiculous, stupid stuff. We have one person trying to keep the peace, but at what cost?!? This was fast paced and incredibly entertaining.

A plane crash on a deserted island. A strange glass house. Survivors are disappearing. This is the set up for this fast paced near future thriller.
An entertaining page turner. 4 stars.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC.


I

It's the near future, and a plane full of tech start-up employees has crashed on an abandoned island. Well, abandoned except for the huge tech-mansion whose door only opens when a man touches it.

Wait, back up. It's the nearer future, and Kristen works for a Canadian tech start-up which is trying to sell some impossible to make design that involves monetizing human emotion. Her boss is in love with her, her coworkers are suspicious of her, and she's hooking up with a spy who she occasionally meets in other countries. The planet is dying, and so are plenty of other people.

Wait, back up again. It's a very near future, and Kristen has survived the house fire that killed her parents. It was started when her father's bitcoin business hit big, overloading his basement set-up. Even in the hospital, Kristen is hounded by her family's fans and foes. Lots of people are influencers in this future, and Kristen has been one against her will all of her life. She has PTSD around surveillance and entrapment.

Pretty great concept for a thriller, which is absolutely what this is no matter what marketing you've seen. I only gave it four stars because I'm tired of people getting away with things that nobody should get away with. Then again, even though Kristen is not a great person and neither is anybody else in this book, I was rooting for her to win.

Glass Houses, set in the near future, had all the makings of a great mystery. It started with the crash of an autonomous airplane onto a deserted island and the survivors finding their way into a large glass mansion. There are two timelines, one during the time on the island and one for the time before the flight. However, there was a lot of technology in this book. Most of this tech made little to no sense to me and I have no idea if it is even real. Not understanding any of the tech and the amount of it was a major drawback, but if you can skip over those parts it was an interesting story.

My copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to the the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review it.

Wuv (maybe the worst name ever), an AI algorithm for emotions has been sold for big bucks and the team, including billionaire CEO Sumter, is on a trip to celebrate. Unfortunately there is a plane crash into an island. The good news is this island has a fully stocked, deserted mansion, filled with tech updates. The house also has some secrets.

Kristen, the “chief emotional officer” (previously known as HR, and really Sumter’s right hand) is trying to keep everyone going, and that includes keeping everyone alive. And that’s going to take everything she’s got.

Well, first you have to get over the ridiculous premise, and then supposedly smart people keep doing stupid things. But it wasn’t a terrible book and I kept turning the pages.

The error suspense in this book is what I loved the most about it. It was a slow burn but still very much a page turner. I really liked the characters arcs too