Glitch: Lost in Time Book One by Brenda Pandos
Genre: Sci-fi, Romance
Published By: Corgi Children’s
Pages: 300
Format: E-Book
Rating: ★★
Where to Find: Goodreads | Amazon

We received this book via NetGallery in exchange for an honest review.

The first thing I have to say is that this book was nothing like what I was expecting. When it said ‘zombies’ I was instantly reminded of ‘Warm Bodies’ and was expecting something like that – not the zombie love part, but just the zombies in general. It turned out that the zombies were just a myth told by the government as, you guessed it, a means of control. (Or were they?! Spoilers.)

As readers, we are thrown straight into the action, at a baseball game. A lot of world-explaining goes on within the first chapter that could have been slightly smoother in my opinion, but at least everything was explained so the author could get the plot moving forward. Our main character is Abby, and as main characters go, was quite nice. (High praise.) She is your perfect citizen so finds it slightly difficult, as you can imagine, to adapt to the world that’s been opened to her when she looks beyond the watch on her wrist that tells her when she’s going to die.

Generally, I thought there were quite a lot of concepts to the world; dates of death, zombies, Oracles and time travel to name a few, and this led some of the narrative to sound cluttered, but I enjoyed the fast pace of the first 25% and how the perfect world was destroyed quickly.

When Abby is abducted against her will, as she reminds us multiple times throughout the novel, she meets Kaden. Kaden is the love interest, though he and Abby have only had one conversation, if that, before Abby begins to have feelings for him. There is kind of a love triangle with Kaden and his brother Memphis (brotherly competition) but it’s always obvious that Kaden will come out on top.

Abbey is taken to Kaden’s colony, which is kind of ‘The Host’-esque. She is in inner torment about whether she should stay in the colony or try to return. (At least Melanie and Wanda didn’t have a choice – makes for less inner conflict.) This carried on until Abby decided to return and it took her a further 25% of the book to reach this decision.

Abby plays a big part in the destruction of her world. She is the Oracle, who has the power to time travel but doesn’t know how to use her powers wisely…like any superhero in the beginning. When her Complement, meaning her future self, tells her she has to murder someone, I was instantly confused. Time travel happened, it was very back-and-forth and hard to keep up with. A lot was happening and the pace was fast, so this probably didn’t help me to get to grips with what was going on. But, the book sure as heck ended on a cliff hanger.

Now I need to read the second book, to know how the problems resolve and how the future was affected by Abby’s choices. Something tells me, now that we’ve had the first book to explain the world and set up the plot, the sequel is going to be juicy and jam-packed with stuff (more than this book, if possible.)

I’d recommend this book to anyone that enjoyed ‘Slated by Teri Terry’ as it has a similar premise, and the presence of zombies set this book apart from other dystopian series. Overall, I’d give this book 2 stars, as I did thoroughly enjoy the novel, but did have some problems with the extent of the content.