(4.5/5 stars. My review will be posted on Thoroughly Modern Reviewer on publication day at this link: https://thoroughlymodernreviewer.com/2021/02/09/the-future-is-yours-dan-frey-review/)

I often find epistolary novels to be a bit hit or miss. Sometimes, they get too bogged down with exposition and never manage to coalesce into anything compelling. Other times, there’s not enough exposition, and the reader is left flailing about, trying to catch up with what’s going on. Modern epistolary novels have the additional problem of feeling gimmicky—Romeo and Juliet retold through text messages will always feel like a cash grab. These kinds of books walk a fine line between being enjoyable and unbearably kitschy. Luckily, "The Future is Yours" perfectly walks that line. It utilizes its various textual sources not as a gimmick but as a way of further exploring its themes. There’s a transcript of a congressional hearing that acts as a throughline for the book, allowing various congresspeople to interrogate Ben about the various potential ethical and societal issues that might come with using the technology his company’s created. There are news articles gathered from the novel’s future, elaborating on the societal reaction to the technology being widely available. What results is a book that doesn’t just feel like a gimmick. All of the in-universe sources feel grounded in the world Frey’s created. Each piece coalesces into a story that feels like it couldn’t have been told any other way.

A lot of praise should be directed towards how well Frey structures the book. It would have been very easy to overload the reader with too much exposition at the beginning of the book—like including an in-universe biography of the characters or something like that. But that’s not what Frey does here. Instead, we learn background information about the characters and the world as they become relevant. The plot is conveyed naturalistically through the characters’ communications—research reports handle explaining how the technology works, emails between the duo and their business partners explain how the business works, etc. The whole thing results in an experience unlike any other. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that someone has gathered all of these documents together and is presenting them in a way where each one builds off of the previous ones. For a book that’s about time travel, there’s a surprising amount of linear storytelling that happens. As you read the book, Frey lays out all of the information in such a way that you can kind of predict where the story is going—but not in a disappointing way. The book never feels derivative or too predictable. Instead, everything just feels fully developed and well-explored. The ideas explored within "The Future is Yours" aren’t ones that have been previously explored, which is why it is sometimes easy to see where things are going. But the way they’re explored in this book feels wholly unique and I was enthralled from beginning to end.

The book’s greatest strength is probably its characters—specifically how realistic they feel. From page one, Ben and Ahdi feel fully formed and three-dimensional. Naturally, much of this is due to great swaths of the book being comprised of communication between the two characters, in the form of emails and text messages and research reports written by one to the other. Through these writings, Frey expertly brings readers into the minds of these characters. We understand who they are, what they want, and why they want it. Their realness helps keep the book grounded, which helps the broader sci-fi elements land better. And the more we get to know the characters, the easier it is for us to guess what they’re going to do. Again, this ability to predict aspects of the story never feels disappointing. After all, the book is largely about the inevitability of the future and whether or not it can be changed. Frey simply explores his characters so well that it’s easy to understand their mindsets. And when you understand a character’s mindset, it can be easy to predict what they might do. And, honestly, there’s a lot of satisfaction to be had in making predictions that end up being correct. I adored getting to know these characters in such a deep way. For as much as the book is about the technology created by these two friends, it’s even more about their friendship—how it leads to this incredible invention and how that invention impacts their friendship.

Epistolary novels often feel very slow, bogged down by lengthy diary entries or letters. The lack of traditional prose in those novels ends up creating a more lethargic feeling. "The Future is Yours," however, is comprised of a variety of sources, all of which are mostly short. This brevity helps establish the kind of faster pace that you might find in a prose-based novel. In all honesty, I didn’t find myself missing the prose at all. This isn’t the kind of story that needs a bunch of lengthy passages describing characters’ feelings, or exactly what a room looks like, or exactly what is happening in any given moment. Instead, Frey allows the various pieces of writing to establish all that needs establishing. The congressional hearings provide a narrative backbone, the emails and text messages provide the dialogue, the longer blog posts and news articles provide the backstory, etc. The variety of sources largely bridges the gap left by the lack of traditional prose and it’s amazing how none of this ends up resulting in a slow, boring book. I breezed through this book because Frey kept cutting between the various pieces of writing, interweaving between the various sources as needed. There are moments of exposition, moments of philosophical discussion, and moments of tension and excitement, but none of these outweigh each other. "The Future is Yours" is perfectly balanced, with pacing that could rival any of the best prose-based thrillers.

All in all,"The Future is Yours" is a fantastic read. It’s immediately captivating, holding the reader’s attention from its first page to its final one. The characters are fully-formed, with each of them possessing believable backstories and relationships that carefully unfold over the novel’s length. By writing an epistolary story, Frey invites his readers to feel like they are part of the book. Reading "The Future is Yours" is like getting to be in the world of the story. Readers get to read these documents and experience the book’s events from the vantage point of one living it. The pacing is strong, with Frey cutting back and forth between various pieces of in-universe writing. The ending is a little abrupt, though, and quite likely too ambiguous for many readers. But the rest of the book more than makes up for this. At the end of the day, if you’re into near-future sci-fi thrillers, "The Future is Yours" is the book for you.

Unique. Excellent! This is an intriguing new sci-fi tech time travel story by Dan Frey. An absolute page turner. I could not put it down. Ben’s and Adhi’s story is told through a serious of documents, court records, articles, texts and emails. The suspense created by this format is nail biting. The twists just keep on coming. A fascinating dilemma. If you could look 1 year into the future, would you? What would you do if someone told you, The Future is Yours?

I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley in an exchange for an honest review.

The Future is Yours by Dan Frey is a creative sci-fi imagining of our world and what it would be like if we could digitally see into the future, even just one year ahead.

When I first saw the book's format, I felt like it would either be a creative delight or a technical nightmare. I was so happy to discover that the structure is an innovative and brilliant way to tell the tale. I feel that it is a perfect way, as I can't even imagine that the story would have been nearly as intriguing or fast-paced if written using a typical exposition style. Sure, some documents were so technical that they were like Charlie Brown adult speak but only a few. Therein lies the brilliance – the real feel of the documents, from the technical to the charming texts from Adhvan's mom that showed an expected lack of technological know-how. The characters' voices were very distinct in each text, tweet, and email, that there is never any confusion.

I also loved how well developed the characters are, even though I wouldn't have thought they could be, given the format. They are people I know, people I went to school with, and the teenagers I counseled along the way. Ben, Adhvan, and Leila are friends who went to college together and are now trying to run a successful business. The exploration of the many layers developed through these experiences is so beautiful and realistic that I could not help but celebrate and cringe at them at various points in the story.

Though I could see bits and pieces that reminded me of other stories I read, the plot brings into focus a whole new disturbing concept- digital time travel or digital quantum physics. That is both chilling and fascinating to imagine. And the thoughts about what an ordinary person would do with such an ability is just as suspenseful as imagining what political systems would do with it. Doesn't that send chills down your spine thinking about it?

I think what I loved most of all, though, is the theme of the importance of friendship. In this ever-shrinking digital world where possibilities seem endless, at the end of the day, what does it all matter if you have alienated all your friends while exploring it? Would the future feel bright if your friends aren't there by your side, or would it be a dark world full of mass destruction and despair? And how do you make sure that those bonds stay intact in a world where most of us communicate through texts, tweets, and emails? I think perhaps that is the most chilling of all questions to ponder. How much does digital communication erode our humanity?

You wouldn't think that all of the aspects mentioned above could be contained in a collection of related digital footprints, but you will be surprised by what you take away from this story once you close it for the final time and can't help but reflect on it.

The Future is Yours by Dan Frey is a science fiction/tech thriller.

First, let me thank NetGalley, the publisher Random House Publishing, and of course the author, for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.


My Synopsis:   (No major reveals, but if concerned, skip to My Opinions)

Ben Boyce and Adhi Chaudry, friends since university.  Ben, a social whiz who can talk his way in and out of anything, and Adhi,  who suffers from social anxiety, but has a brain that won't stop.

Together, they create a computer that can talk to its future self one year from now....ie a type of time machine.  So, this machine could look ahead and see what's happening...who wins the election or the big game, who's going to die, what the stock market is doing.

Hmmm...that sounds promising, but is it ethical?  Can it work?  What more could they do?  But the first step will be getting it to market.  Ben handles the management side, while Adhi develops the programming. They call their new computer "The Future", and hope to have it in all consumers hands within a year.

While the two are friends, they have very different outlooks on The Future, and those differences only escalate.


My Opinions:   

First, let me admit that I don't know where my head was at when I requested this book from NetGalley.  I like Sci-Fi, but technical Sci-Fi....not so much.  However, I didn't find the technical aspect of the book that difficult, because the characters were more interesting than anything else.

The story is told through emails and texts, blog posts, transcripts, etc.  It was an interesting method of story-telling, and actually worked really well.  Surprisingly the characters, even with this method of relating their story, were deep.  Their back-stories got told, and their relationship ups and downs, and an emotional element clearly shone through.  Their anger, their frustration, their passion.

Yes, the book is about technology, and the morality and ethical problems that could arise, but more importantly, the book is about friendship, and greed, and ambition. It is about trust and betrayal.

It was quite good!  If I sound surprised...I am.

A popular narrative style these days, especially in YA, is a story told entirely in texts, e-mails, transcripts, etc. This novel is told that way--and still manages to remain very cinematic as it extrapolates a computer start-up put together by a couple of college friends.

One is a brilliant computer geek, the other a marketing maven. The computer geek unsuccessfully tried to pitch as his PhD thesis a computer that can tell the future . . . and when he's turned down by his academic committee, he and his friends go off to the Silicon World.

Unfortunately, at that point I began to lose interest, as their relationship deteriorates and they both turn into total lunchbuckets. That might be super exciting for some readers, especially at the wild tech that glitters all through the pages. I just don't want to spend my time with jerks, so my interest began to wane toward the end.

So this might be just the book for you--the skiffy is certainly fun and glitzy.

The Future Is Yours by Dan Frey 

 Ben Boyce and Adhi Chaudry have been friends since their first days in college. I never played too many of those old text based computer games but this story reminded me of them, in a way. It's told entirely through emails, texts, blogs, and transcripts, with newspaper articles from the future scattered throughout. Even though it's science fiction it came off as more of a character study with a "make up your own ending" surprise at the end. I do not like to make up my own ending, so even though I was interested in the maybe world ending invention of Ben and Adhi, I was disappointed that the story didn't feel finished to me. 

Ben Boyce is selfish, devious, after fame and fortune, hell bent on selling something to make his name in the world. I think he'd be happy selling cyanide laced pacifiers to babies if it would give him the major kudos he wants. His friend, Adhi, is a mentally ill genius and better off left alone than drawn into Ben's super sales pitched gimmicks. But Adhi has the brains (and some data stolen from Google) to devise a machine that can go into the future and read computers, thus giving the present day person knowledge of what is going to happen a year in the future. Ben sees the potential for billions of dollars if they can harness this ability and sell it to the everyday man and woman. He justifies this all by claiming the responsibility of using future knowledge falls on the shoulders of the people that buy their device.

As we watch all of this play out before us, the dysfunctional relationship between Ben and Adhi seems to drive the story. I don't really understand the tech of the invention and I'm not sure it's explained well enough for me to understand it. Then we come to the ending, the question of whether  Ben and Adhi can pull back what they have unleashed to prevent the world from destroying itself. And that's an ending you have to make up for yourself because that ending hasn't been written. I enjoyed the presentation of the story but I prefer not to have to make up my own ending. 

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group-Ballantine/Del Rey and NetGalley for this ARC.

The Future Is Yours by Dan Frey is an intriguing epistolary sci-fi time travel thriller. I can never resist a time travel story and this is a decent one. The format and concept make it stand out from the crowd. For the most part, it worked for me and it's a solid read. The layout is what really made it for me - I liked reading the blog posts, emails, text messages, congressional hearings, and more that make up the book. The voices of the two lead characters come through well in the format. I just wish the novel had the opportunity to explore more in terms of the actual technology and just how much it affects much more of the wider world beyond the petty squabbles of the leads.

The plot of this novel is very interesting and raises many questions about the ethics of technology and the reality of free will. It also delves into some real science such as quantum mechanics. The fictional way in which the characters are able to create a computer to see the future makes sense. I loved the pop culture references and I really liked the ending, which was surprising and satisfying. My problem lies with the execution. The story is told through emails, texts and news printouts, present and future. There is also an excerpt of a Congressional hearing with Ben, one of the founders of the company that can see into the future, which sounded so stilted as to be distracting. The casual tone of the conversations may be the way people talk nowadays but it was repetitive and included too much information for my liking. I also doubt that “bitching” is a term used in many Congressional hearings. Younger readers may find this more amusing, but I was distracted by all the coolness.
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, NetGalley/Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine!

This book is written entirely in mixed media: text messages, blog posts, emails, you name it! Albeit the execution of this novel is super cool, it had a hard time keeping my attention. I absolutely loved the concept and felt like it really fit the genre well, but it fell short in a lot of areas for me. I'm glad I finished it in the end, but wouldn't pick this one up again.

*3-3.5 stars. Written in the form of texts, emails, transcripts of testimony, etc., this novel tells the story of two college roommates who come up with an idea for how to access the future using the magic of quantum computing. You can tell the author is a screenwriter because these characters are so stereo-typical. I found it, however, to be a quick and entertaining read because I have a fascination for anything related to time travel.

One young man is an Indian-American named Adhvan Chaudry who is a painfully-introverted computer science genius who of course is the brains behind this scheme. His best friend is an African-American guy named Ben Boyce who basically wants to be the first black billionaire and has the charisma and the moves to get there.

And the machine works--the idea being that your present-day computer can access your computer one year in the future and see what is happening in your life and the world. Just think how that could be used! But right away there are ethical questions, ie: does it take away 'free will?' The two partners don't always agree and then the money men weigh in and the government...and...well, what a mess. According to Ben, 'It is not the scientist's responsibility to anticipate every eventuality his discovery may produce.' Or is it?

I found this to be pretty entertaining, a book that drew me back to reading more, but my husband, a big scifi fan, didn't care for the form in which it is written and abandoned it after just a few pages. So it definitely is not for everyone. But if you hang in till the end, there is actually a reason for this form that makes sense. So you decide.

I received an arc of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks for the opportunity.

“The Future Is Yours” - Dan Frey

Time travel tales are a staple of science fiction and date to its earliest writings. I am amazed at how many different stories can be told through this vehicle. Through “The Future Is Yours” Frey gives us a fresh look at this old standard.

Unfortunately the author chooses to tell the story in a way that leaves the reader wanting. I understand the desire to look at stories from a fresh perspective, and even to indulge in experimental writing. However, telling a story through emails, texts, and Congressional hearing records doesn’t do it for me.

Frey gets the science, which is always nice when it happens. He explores the philosophical “what if” and makes it plausible. Then he uses one dimensional characters as leads. I found it frustrating and I honestly didn’t care about a single person in the book.

Although this story had good bones, there wasn’t enough muscle for it to run. Three stars for a mixed bag book.

This book was a Netgalley gift from Del Rey in exchange for my honest review.

“The Future Is Yours” by Dan Frey

This sci-fi novel is an interesting take on time travel. Frey does a good job with the science behind his idea. His protagonists are both really annoying, though. They are so stereotypes as to be almost caricatures.
Flat out, I don’t like the writing style. The story is told through text messages, emails, letters, Congressional hearing minutes, etc. In my view is a mess.
Three stars is what I rate this book. Good idea, not so good execution.
This book was a Netgalley gift from Del Rey in exchange for my honest review. The opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Ahoy there me mateys!  I received this sci-fi eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  So here be me honest musings . . .

This book just did not work for me.  I gave it a good whirl and actually finished it but was ultimately very disappointed.  The main premise is that two best friends have a start up company called The Future where they have a device that can pull internet data from one year in the future.  The story is told using emails, texts, articles, and transcripts.

I did like the format.  But I read this book wanting to know how the device was used in a practical sense.  I was not satisfied with how it works or evolves.  I found one of the main characters, Ben, to be beyond horrible as a person and I almost stopped reading half-way through because of it.  Frankly his best friend and wife deserve better.  The subplot involving the two of them was irksome though.  Plus that ending was awful and cheesy.

I do think this book can find a good readership.  I just wasn't in that group.  Arrr!

This book is a lot of fun and very enjoyable. I will admit that the ending falls apart, but until that point it's a great ride. It's not really going out on a limb to guess that knowing the future would yield unforeseen problems. Can we learn from something that we don't do? If you realize that the future is changeable, could you stop a catastrophe from happening but still allow the possiblity? Great book, fun reading.

I want to thank NetGalley and Ballantine Books for an early copy of The Future is Yours to review. If possible I would give this story 2 and a half stars, seeing I cannot do this I am upping it to 3 stars. At times my eyes glazed over reading about the technology and the hearings in Congress. I love time travel stories but this book basically isn't one of those.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dan Frey for an advanced copy in return for my honest review. The Future Is Yours is available to read on February 9, 2021!

Ben Boyce and Adhi Chaudry have created the holy grail – a device that can give a 100% accurate future. What are the hottest stocks, who your love interest is, what to expect from your favorite sports teams, this device has all of the answers! Naturally, Ben and Adhi find out about their success from their future-selves, a year in advance. Would you want this kind of power or would you be nervous to find out what your future holds?

This was a tough read for me – there was a lot of sciency stuff that made my eyes glaze over that I ended up just skimming and although the structure of the book made it a quick read, I wasn’t a fan of the style. Not only was it written in text, email, or conversing via the court case; there was a lot of bouncing back and forth between time frames. The topic was interesting and nothing like I have ever read before but as mentioned above – the science and format of the book was too much and took away from the overall story itself. I would definitely say to give this one a go if you are interested in something futuristic!

It was hard to review The Future because it was a good read once I got used to the back-and-forth writing style buut... I didn't much like either one of the main characters. In fact, the secondary characters weren't all that likable either. Ben was a self-serving, cheating user, and Adhi was about as distant as a person can be and still call himself a member of the human race. Yet the premise of being able to connect to computers in the future and what that might mean was fascinating. It seemed all too believable, especially when it got to the part when everyone except Amazon was going after their company. So I give the book 4 stars for the plot and the writing.

I received an ARC from Random House and NetGalley.com. I wasn't required to write a positive review & opinions expressed are my own. FTC 16 CFR, Pt 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements &Testimonials in Advertising.

Thanks to Del Rey and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.

I got recommended this because I had read and liked Blake Crouch's [book:Recursion|42046112], and if you liked that book, this one is absolutely going to scratch the same itch. It's propulsive as hell, and the use of multiple styles of writing (transcripts, texts, articles, tumblr posts, etc) gives some nice texture to the narrative. The ending felt a little abrupt (and it's a little tech bro-y overall), but I devoured this over the course of a day and had a blast the entire time.

I read this book in less than 24 hours, and if that’s not a recommendation I don’t know what is!

In all seriousness though, I thought this was a really clever critique of the power technology companies have in the modern world. The premise is that the two main characters, Adi and Ben, develop a technology that allows you to transmit information from the future and read it in the past. This leads to the classic time-travel exploration of cause and effect, free will, and ethical dilemmas. Despite the well-worn themes, I felt like this book did a good job of portraying the social responsibility of scientists/sellers of technology and calling out the ways technological companies have been largely skirting responsibility in the real world. I did find some of the present day references to Theranos, Cambridge Analytica, TikTok and Tr*mp’s tweets a little tacky (although very timely), but that’s a minor annoyance and just something that bugs me personally.

Another plus is that both the main characters are people of color, and it was really great to see Black and Desi men as leaders in their field and protagonists of a story instead of pigeon-holed into the sidekick/best friend role. I liked that both characters had some deep flaws but remained sympathetic characters, and I especially liked the emphasis placed on their friendship. Both Adi and Ben are also described as neurodivergent (Adi is said to be “on the spectrum”, while Ben has ADHD), but I can’t really speak to how well these characters captured the experiences of neurodivergent folks. Since this novel is told almost entirely in transcripts, text messages, and news articles, I think it’s difficult to capture those nuances. I also caught a minor cultural error (at some point, Adi says something about “goddess Shiva” but Shiva is a Hindu god – not goddess – and a very quick google search will tell you that), so I’m not totally sold on the research that went into creating these characters.

Overall, I did enjoy this book and would definitely recommend it for people who enjoy Sylvain Neuvel’s Sleeping Giants series. The characters in Sleeping Giants were more compelling, but this book is similarly fast-paced and tackles social ills through science fiction.

The Future is an exceptional read, it was my first time reading Dan Frey and I loved it. I think this book will be especially fun for fans of tech and all it does, and will do. I really dug the way the story was told through various forms. Meaning, Dan Frey was hella creative by telling the story in paragraph form, plus using the formats of emails, texts, and a congressional hearing. The characters had excellent depth and the plot had numerous turns, many of which were unexpected. Aldi's story arc was flat out great as was the ending. This is a writer I need to keep my eye on.