This story was not for me, but that's mostly because I'm not a big fan of mystery thriller stories that also have sci-fi elements to them. The characters also fell a little flat for me. Altebrando's writing is very intriguing though, and does pull you in to the story.

I received an e-galley of this title from NetGalley in exchange for my review. In Take Me With You, four teens in Astoria, Queens are mysteriously summoned to their music classroom after school. Once there, these teens (who only vaguely know of each other) find a device that demands they take it with them. From that decision forward, the four find themselves at the mercy of the device.

This book is an extremely interesting premise that wasn't quite as thrilling as I had hoped. However, the questions raised about our connected lives and our relationships are good ones. I'll purchase this title for my library, where I expect it will have a list of readers waiting for it.

I loved the premise and the cover and sadly, the story didn’t quite deliver.

The four MCs are all wildly different and I liked that. The POVs did switch often and from that I never felt settled into the story. There are a lot of secondary characters and some of them didn’t seem necessary. If either of those things were intentional to throw off the story, I’m applauding.

Plot wise, it was okay. The start had a decent amount of tension and the build up was promising. As things progressed, I was drawn in and intrigued at where it was going. Annnnnnd then the reveal fell so flat.

Overall, it had a lot of promise, but didn’t work for me...especially the last few chapters.

**Huge thanks to Bloomsbury for providing the arc free of charge**

I DNF this book around 20%. From the beginning the story or characters didn't draw me in, I just wasn't interested in what was happening. I also found the characters to be lean heavily into stereotypes/assumptions which I wasn't impressed by. I didn't "get it", the premise seemed a bit more sci-fi, which was misleading. I found the writing to be kind of chunky and there were so many added details that were completely unnecessary, I was skimming right from the beginning. I understand that the box is the driving force behind the story but it didn't give enough reasons for the kids not to ignore or toss it right from the beginning, I was waiting for that to happen. Hopefully others have better luck with this one.

In Tara Altebrando's newest book, Take Me With You, she addresses an unusual situation - what happens when four near-strangers are bonded by an Artificial Intelligence?

Marwan, Eden, Eli, and Ilanka are four students in the same high school who are summoned one afternoon to the music room by their teacher, or so they think. The teacher is not there, and they are intrigued by a black cube on the teacher's desk which gives them messages: Do not tell anyone about the device. Never leave the device unattended. And then, Take me with you . . . or else. Though the teens are not convinced, a sudden fire alarm sounds and one of them grabs the cube as they evacuate.

The cube continues to give commands to the teens. The book is told in alternating points of view from all four of the main characters. The AI's knowledge of them and its capabilities grow, even as the quartet tries to follow the first two rules. People around them grow curious. And when Marwan decides to abandon the device, it fries his cell phone as punishment. He must apologize to get his phone to work again.

This is an interesting book. The ending was a bit anti-climactic after all the buildup throughout, but it was engaging enough to continue. If you like psychological thrillers, you might like Take Me With You.

Thank you to Bloomsbury for sending me an ARC via netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
4/5 stars.
This was a good read! I enjoyed the story, and I liked the characters. The whole thing with the device was slightly creepy and very uncomfortable especially as things started to progress in the story. I wouldn’t say it was a full-thriller, for me at least, but it was definitely a unique read with well-rounded characters and a plot that had good pacing. Everything made sense when it was explained, and it was explained as the characters figured it out so I had the chance to take guesses at what exactly I thought was going on! (I was wrong. Repeatedly.)
One thing I wasn’t a big fan of was the formatting. I’m not sure if it was because I was reading an eBook version of this ARC, but some of the lines
would be
like this and I
found it to be
really annoying because it
interrupts the flow of the
sentence.
I’m not sure if this was an eBook formatting issue or if it was intentional but it seemed kind out of place. The book also doesn’t have chapters. It switches between the POVs of Eden, Eli, Marwan, and Ilanka, but we stay in third person the whole time. I didn’t mind the POV switches, but it would happen in the middle of a page and again it kind of interrupted the flow.
Overall though I enjoyed reading this book, and if you like some unconventional type thriller books, or if you like stories about creepy AI, then I’d suggest checking this one out.

Look out for this review on my Instagram account (alli_the_bookaholic13) later this week! :)

Chilling and creepy. Who would do this and why? This book kept up late at night because I had to know an so will you. The twists and turns will have you guessing that you know and you just don't. A must read. Happy reading!

This had all the trappings to make this an excellent YA thriller but unfortunately it fell flat for me. I'm not sure maybe it was me and I didn't get it and it might work well for others.

The book, according to me, promised me so many things and all those themes were excellent but ended up just fizzling out without a proper closure. It barely touched upon the original thought and concept and that was quite frustrating.

I don't want to say more negative things because this is a personal choice and feedback and does not necessarily reflect on the book and how it would work on others.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This thriller tells the story of four high schoolers with seemingly no connection who get brought together one day by an AI device. The device, which goes by the name Aziel, gives the teens very specific rules to follow with the threat of “or else” if they don’t comply. Eden, Eli, Marwan, and Ilanka all have their own personal issues to work through while also trying to solve the mystery of where the device came from and what its purpose is, which leads to lapses in judgments and some devastating consequences.

My actual rating for this book is 3.5. It’s a high-interest, quick YA read. I love the diversity in this book. All four characters come from different cultural backgrounds, and Altebrando does a nice job of allowing the characters to wrestle with real-life issues that enhance the characters and subplots without sidetracking from the AI plot. What I didn’t like is how neatly the subplots wrap up. They are not at all realistic, especially Marwan’s, and I think Altebrando missed some significant learning opportunities.

Overall, this is an extremely relevant story in today’s society. For a thriller, it kept me on my toes. I didn’t have a clue where the device came from or why it targeted those four students, and honestly I’m still not completely sure. The ending gets pretty tech savvy and that’s not my forte at all, but I still enjoyed the story. I imagine many teens would have a better understanding, and that is definitely the target audience. Thank you to Net Galley, Tara Altebrando, and Bloomsbury for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I honestly loved this book so much more than I expected! The action starts pretty much immediately, and it had me hooked after the first 10 pages. The author did an amazing job of creating super realistic and believable characters and made the life they were dealing with in Queens feel like something that would be happening right now. The book was spot on in handling some real life issues including hate crimes but also dealt with our reliance on our phone and devices. It made me thing a lot about artificial intelligence and how scary it could actually get the more it is developed! Overall this was an awesome book and such a fun read, and I would definitely pick up more from this author.

You know you’re in for a wild ride when an author creates a simple black cube and makes it creepy as all get out. I had no idea what I was in for when I started TAKE ME WITH YOU.

As soon as Eden took the cube, I knew I was hooked. I sneaked in a few pages between things I had to get done. Anytime I had a couple minutes, I was right back in the pages of the book.

Eden and Marwan are my favorites. I loved the fact that we got to see what they were each thinking about each other but not brave enough to say. And I loved that even though the cube opened up a nightmare for all the people involved, it also forced people who were isolated in different ways to take risks and form friendships. That part was really cool.

I think I stayed on the edge of my seat with this book all the way until the end. It’s definitely the kind of book where you just want there to be another chapter that really, finally, explicitly says what you’ve hoped will happen. But all the possibilities are there, and there’s something really sweet in leaving the story with that kind of open doorway to something great.

I really enjoyed TAKE ME WITH YOU. I’m not usually a big suspense reader, but I definitely enjoyed this book a lot. I think fans of WE DIDN’T ASK FOR THIS by Adi Alsaid or THIS IS WHERE IT ENDS by Marieke Nijkamp will like this book.

I had such high hopes for Take Me With You but it fell way flat. I'm filled with disappointment because the story had such promise and was a very intriguing concept for a story but it just didn't deliver. The characters were okay but I wasn't really all that invested even in them enough to really care especially halfway into the book and nothing really was happening. I take that back the beginning was a bit creepy with the four kids getting called into the music room and the discovery and taking of the cube and when they began realizing how they had to follow the "cubes" set of rules but after that I just lost interest.

I don't know if the author just tried to jam to much into one book or what but I felt none of the things really tied together and that ending was plain rushed and interestingly a big disappointment.

4 teens receive a notice from a classroom app that their music teacher wants to meet them after school. But when they arrive, the music teacher isn’t there. There is, however, a little black cube that tells them to not leave the device unattended…or else, right as a fire alarm goes off. One of the teens decides to grab the device on her way out, and starts them on a crazy chain of events. The device is very insistent that its demands be followed, and starts handing out disturbing consequences when it isn’t obeyed. Eden, Eli, Marwan, and Ilanka have their own lives and issues to deal with. Eden is grieving the recent death of her father and trying to figure out if a guy she met at the movies likes her or not, Eli is lonely and watching his grandfather slowly die, Ilanka is a poor little Russian-American rich girl with everything she could ever want materially but little quality time with her parents and only parent-approved friends, Marwan is trying to get a soccer scholarship so he can get out of the city next year and his family’s Egyptian restaurant has been the victim of hate crimes. So they could do without the added stress of a manipulative and powerful device invading their lives. Why did the device pick them? None of them have anything in common they can think of. Who sent it? And what is its end game?

This was very quick to grab my attention and keep me sucked in. I was so curious as to what was going on. The cube is intense, short on what it will tell the teens, and crazy in its consequences. It gets intense at times. The book also makes you think about how much technology you use daily. It doesn’t condemn all tech use, it just makes you think about how much you use it and whether or not it is controlling you. I think it really helps that I just read <i>Rebooting AI</i> by Marcus & Davis so I feel like I have a much clearer picture of how much of this is really possible and how much teeters into scifi. (If this book freaks you out, I suggest hunting down a copy of <i>Rebooting AI</i>.) The background stuff going on in each of the teen’s lives was interesting and most readers should relate to at least one of them. It helped you care about them and what was going on with the cube more. It also helps make the story that much richer that the teens realize that these other strangers, or just names with faces have their own issues and challenges and may not be the person they assumed from afar. It’s always a good reminder that strangers have full lives and their own issues and are rarely who we think they are based on appearances. Highly recommended to those who like thrillers, contemporary fiction, and very light scifi stories about AI.

Notes on content [based on the ARC]: About 5-6 mild swears. No sex scenes. One girl is being pressured by a guy to send “fun” pictures, it mentions she takes some in revealing clothing but deletes them. (In the end, there’s a positive message about how guys are creeps and gross to even ask for these.) One of the teen girls spent a movie kissing a guy. One of the teen's mom's may or may not be in an affair. Marwan is being bullied and his family restaurant is egged and then their window is broken by vandals with messages about “going home.” There is a positive peaceful resolution to this. Two deaths are mentioned that happen off page with no description.

<i>I received an ARC of this title from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.</i>

Eden, Eli, Ilanka, and Marwan all receive a notification from a teacher to meet in a classroom after school. They all arrive, yet there is no teacher … just a small cube resting on the desk. They aren’t sure what they should do or why they were called to this classroom, but then the cube lights up and gives them some rules: they aren’t to tell anyone about the device, they should never leave the device unattended and they need to take the cube with them. They don’t know if this is a prank or some sort of experiment, but they follow the rules … or at least try to. The cube keeps adding new rules that make the group interactions even more complicated. What is this cube and what will it eventually expect from these teens?

Take Me with You is a stand-alone novel that is part thriller, part science fiction, and part coming of age story. Just like the cube doesn’t fit neatly in these teens' preconceived ideas, this novel doesn’t fit any one genre either. Altebrando has created a story with so much potential, yet it just falls flat. The ending was anticlimactic and I lost interest about halfway through. It wasn’t a long read, so I don’t feel like it was a waste of time, but it isn’t a book I can strongly recommend to everyone. A fun read, just not a great read.

TW for death of a parent and grandparent, grief, racism and hate crimes

The premise of this story held so much potential but I think the author’s writing style and execution is what lost it for me. The story was really intriguing and when I was reading it, I wanted to find out what would happen next, but more out of curiosity than actual investment in the story and characters. Every topic she touched on and every strange scenario the characters found themselves in, it all just felt thrown together and haphazardly connected. On top of all that, some of the
resolutions felt half-assed and I was not satisfied by the conclusion at all. Personally, I think with more editing and a more complex and satisfying ending, then this book could’ve made a really great thriller, but as it is, it just didn’t succeed for me.

HELLO_WORLD

If you follow my reviews, then you know that I love SciFi with every ounce of my being—especially SciFi that addresses technology, cultural differences, and our perception of reality. TAKE ME WITH YOU is a YA SciFi about a device that mysteriously appears in a classroom and bosses around a group of teens, and it touches on each of these topics.

There are two particularly interesting plot threads here. There’s the device itself, which becomes increasingly more dangerous as it begins learning novel ways to threaten and coerce the teens to force them to do its bidding. The rules are strange and unsettling at first, but just wait until the rules start changing. The mystery behind what the device is and where it came from is built layer by layer, leaving me dying to know what this object is really all about.

Then there are the characters. These four teenagers would never have interacted on their own, but the device brings them together and changes their lives. I loved the inclusion of different cultures and the fact that racism was addressed and portrayed in a realistic way, forcing the characters into some uncomfortable situations.

The ending is the reason this book isn’t a 5-star read; while I enjoyed the fast pace and multiple POVs, I was a little disappointed that the “reveal” was vague and overshadowed by intense action scenes.

Thank you to NetGalley for the free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Note to self: if I ever see a strange little box that starts talking to me? Yeah I’m out. And I’m side-eyeing my old Teddy Ruxpin. I see you bro.

Shortest Summary Ever: 4 teens, all different, with no apparent connection are summoned to a classroom one day after school. In the room sits a small black box. It starts delivering messages such as “do not leave the box unattended” and “do not ignore me” ...or else. From there the box, named Aizel, leads each student in different directions into their different and complicated lives...

My thoughts: I thoroughly enjoyed the taut suspense and the questions raised about technology and social media. This isn’t Sci-fi... this technology exists now and there are lawsuits pending for such things as the selling of data, spying, hacking etc - and this AI technology is real. That’s the part that makes the hair rise. I applaud the author for this intriguing idea.

I’ll never look at “learning toys “ the same way and I think that’s the quality in this novel - it’s a “thinker.” Remember The laughable Chucky doll from the 80s? It was laughable because no - nobody will be resurrected in a doll with voodoo. But can something “live” in “the cloud” forever? What IS Aziel? Could something technological become so advanced that it does as it’s programmed - learns for itself until it’s aware of the programming... and then what? Now cue the next 80’s movie - The Terminator and your mind will be in my realm. Fascinating questions all from this book.

Also enjoyed the diverse characters - Marwan, facing xenophobia, Eli - a quiet gamer who is better at his fake game lives than his real one, Eden - overcoming the death of her father, and Ilanka - pretty and social media savvy but mostly lonely.

All my reviews available at scrappymags.com

Genre: Mystery/thriller in the tech world.

Recommend to: Book clubs - some great controversial topics to explore here, my students, and honestly best-seller fans or those looking for a book that brings forward issues. A YA book thoroughly enjoyed by this not-so-young person!

Not recommended to: if you hate technology (though note I’m NOT techy and loved it).

Thank you to the author, Bloomsbury USA and Netgalley for the ARC and my always-honest reviews. Thanks for making me side-eye my old Teddy Ruxpin too.

Take Me With You is a sci-fi tinged thriller of four seemingly unrelated kids who get stuck basically babysitting a mysterious device. They can't figure out where it came from or for what reason and it gets increasingly threatening whenever the kids ask too many questions or make attempts to get rid of it. They're forced to befriend each other and work together while they try to figure out what's going on and how to stop it.

I'm really sad to say that I didn't enjoy this one as much as I wanted to. The concept is really fun and interesting and I was excited to see where it went. There was a subplot early on about a racist classmate of theirs and white supremacists that were starting to terrorize their neighborhood. It seemed to me that the events were all related and I was hoping for a well thought out solution that tied things in to the way lingering white supremacy in this country has been brought to the public eye in recent years. Instead, this subplot was 'resolved' through a halfhearted apology from the xenophobic kid and one community rally. I was disappointed, I can't even pretend otherwise. It just felt like a lazy way to include racist and xenophobic issues of the day to be woke and relevant, without giving it the treatment it deserves.

As for what was really behind the device, it was an entirely different thing that I won't get into details because of spoilers. What I will say is that it felt underdeveloped and rushed. The kids finding out what was really behind it and it being destroyed all happens in one short chapter, without very much build up. Sure, there's things here and there that might be counted as clues, but the clues are really more as to how they all get together, not what's behind the device and how. I wish more time had been put into it, so we could have had the resolution we deserved as readers, instead of rushing through it.

I'm still giving it three stars, because I do think the concept was interesting and I enjoyed a lot of the characters. However, I wish the execution of the second half - or hell, even the final third!- of the book had been more thought out.

Before the school messaging app summons them all to an empty classroom after school, they barely know each other.

Eden is struggling with anxiety while she grieves her father. Her mother tries to be there, be present, but Eden still feels alone with all of these fears and even scarier feelings.

Marwan has two priorities: excelling enough in soccer to get a college scholarship and getting out of Queens. His immigrant parents don't understand either and would prefer Marwan channel his energy into working at the family's Persian restaurant that he will one day inherit.

Eli loves all things tech and gaming. But it's hard to focus on either while his grandfather is dying a slow death in a nursing home and Eli feels like even more of an afterthought in his own family.

Ilanka has always prided herself on keeping other people at a distance--the better to plan an exit strategy from her claustrophobic family, the rhythmic gymnastics she isn't sure she cares about, and ignore the fact that her "best" friend isn't much of a friend at all.

None of them know why they're summoned to the classroom. They don't even notice the device at first.

Until it lights up and starts telling them the rules: Don't tell anyone about the device. Never leave the device unattended. No one leaves.

Later, there will be other rules, a few mistakes, and a lot of questions but first they're told to take the device with them. Brought together by a mysterious device Eden, Marwan, Eli, and Ilanka will have to work together to uncover answers or suffer the consequences in Take Me With You (2020) by Tara Altebrando.

Altebrando's latest standalone thriller is a dynamo alternating between multiple points of view with tension you can cut with a knife.

This character-driven thriller has an intense plot situated perfectly between suspense and speculative fiction. At the same time, while answering questions about the device motivates all four characters, the story's ultimate focus is on the unlikely connection formed between themin the most unlikely of circumstances.

Take Me With You is a tense, thoughtful thriller with a perfectly executed denouement; the eerily possibly thriller you've been waiting for. Highly recommended.

Possible Pairings: The Smell of Other People's Houses by Bonnie Sue Hitchcock, Infinite in Between by Carolyn Mackler, One of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus, All Our Twisted Secrets by Diana Urban, Places No One Knows by Brenna Yovanoff

*An advance copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review consideration*

This is my third book by this author, and I've enjoyed every one of them.

Several reviewers mentioned they were under the impression this was more of a mystery/thriller, but it's absolutely a sci-fi/thriller - totally my kind of book.  I flew through it in two days.  These four, very relatable teen characters have distinctive personalities, and each is coping with their own complicated problems.  They come from diverse backgrounds and situations, so why they're thrown together is a mystery to them.  The way they learn in such a short time to depend on each other and offer support was a strong point for me.    

And the device!  It's multi-faceted, and over the course of the story is mysterious, helpful, intrusive, and insidious.  I can't say much more without giving away spoilers, but my need to know what was going on made it a struggle to close this book.  Although the reveal is satisfying and even jarring, I did feel as if the problems the characters faced in their personal lives were wrapped up with a pretty large bow at the end, but I seem to be in the minority on that opinion.

This is a completely engaging read with unnerving sci-fi aspects and one I recommend.  I'll be looking for more books by this author in the future.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley.  Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.