I’m a recent (last two years) but huge fan of John Marrs. He weaves a story so uniquely & deftly written that you rip through the book faster than you plan to. This one connects to his previous works The Passengers & The One (both I loved). Three books in & he’s subtly created such a realistic, near future tied to technological advancements that seems almost possible. This books follows the people chosen to hold all of a governments secrets within their minds. It also sprinkles things from the other two books in it so nicely, it feels as though I’m just continuing on with one long story. I love the world Marrs has created & it’s always a joy to get caught up in it, there’s always twists, secrets & surprises galore. It gets a definite recommendation from me & I can only hope there’s more to come.

I requested The Minders from NetGalley because I absolutely loved The One. The Minders is a stand alone novel about a handful of UK citizens who have been entrusted with the country's most classified secrets in exchange for a fresh start and a new lease on life. While not officially a sequel to The One and Passengers, it does feel like a continuation of those stories. For this reason, I was happy to sink my teeth into this story. That said, I felt less invested in the lives of Sinead, Bruno, Flick, Emilia and Charlie. The Minders moves significantly slower than The One, which I inhaled in a day and couldn't stop thinking about for days after. It's a solid addition to John Marrs body of work that puts his outlandish and utterly unique imagination on full display.

This was an amazing read, the author draws you in and you almost could believe that this could happen love all this authors books. They are unique or almost like “black mirror” if it was book

Do not mind me, but I am about to praise this highly original and riveting book!

Most who use the internet have some degree of fear about being hacked, their personal information stolen, used, etc. But what happens when an entire country gets hacked? How do you protect precious information? What can be done to keep top secret information just that - top secret?

Enter the Minders, a group of five individuals who have passed a test and have been selected to be the precious few to keep secrets safe and to thwart cyber terrorism. They have all undergone a medical procedure which implanted secret information into their brains and made them immune to pain. How else did this procedure change them? What a burden to know things that others do not. Conspiracy theories, who needs them when you really know the truth.

What happens when someone learns/knows the minders identities and their current locations? They minders might know the all the secrets, but there is someone out there who knows how to track them and is hunting them down.

I had not read The One or The Passengers prior to reading this one. But I found that I easily slid into this world and hit the ground running. Of course, I am extremely intrigued and will be going back and reading those two books!

I loved how creative and original this book was. I am not the most tech savvy person, I am also not a big reader of science fiction, but I appreciated that nothing was really over my head in this book. Plus, John Marrs made it interesting. High marks to Marrs for that!

What would it be like to know things that no one else knows? What kind of pressure and stress would that cause? How do you keep such information to yourself? How do you go about your day-to-day life? I found these elements to be very intriguing.

Another plus was the POV chapters of the main characters in this book. I love getting into their heads and learning their back and present stories. Some characters I enjoyed more than others, but each had something, whether it be good or bad, that made this book special. I found this book to be hard to put down and a compelling read. In addition, there are some smart twists and turns along the way. Not to mention that big "HOLY CRAP" moment I experienced with the big reveal. I did not see that coming!!!

Another exciting book by Marrs! I cannot wait to see what he comes up with next!

Gripping, thought provoking and original! Highly recommend.

Thank you to Berkley Publishing Group and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own

***A fair warning, this book has spoilers for his other books: The One and The Passengers** I strongly recommend you read both of those books before reading this one! **

Brief Synopsis:The UK government is so desperate to protect their most sensitive information from hackers that they devise a plan to implant this data into a select few people with a unique brain structure. These selected “minders” effectively become biological vaults for all government secrets

I have read three previous novels by John Marrs and I have loved every single one except this one...From the get go you are following five POV's of "Minders" as the story progressed I felt as though there was so much info dumping. The sub-plots were so convoluted and hard for me to cipher between the POVs. As a result, I only found myself drawn to 2 POVs in the book and wanted to skim the other POV's. I just felt like there was too much going on for me to care about the characters or how the plot was moving.

On the plus side as in John Marrs fashion each chapter left on a cliffhanger, the chapters were short and I really enjoyed the futuristic setting, which I think is realistic as what can happen in our future. I mean John Marrs wrote into the story the use of Bitcoins! ( loved that!) There was also LGBTQI+ representation, which is great!

Overall, this book read very much like a black mirror episode. I just wasn't the hugest fan of this one. I still recommend you check it out and any of John Marrs books!


CW: self-harm, death of a child, , gore, domestic abuse, verbal abuse, abuse, one or 2 scenes that are sexual in nature, child abuse, death, murder

Thank you to Berkley Publishing Group and Netgalley for an advanced readers copy in exchange for my review!

My Thoughts
I really enjoyed John Marrs’ last two novels, The One and The Passengers, so there was no way I was going to pass up an opportunity to read and review his new novel! Here are my pros and cons for The Minders:

Pros

1. I love the world that Marrs is creating. His books are not identified as a series, yet themes and situations from The One and The Passengers are definitely referenced in The Minders. Each new book continues to develop this digital, futuristic world that is quite realistic and probably the world we will all being living in before we know it. I think the world-building is top-notch, believable, and incredibly creative in these novels. (Note: You don’t have to read The One and The Passengers to understand The Minders; however, The Minders has a ton of spoilers in it that will ruin the other two books for you if you haven’t read them already. I highly recommend reading these three books in publication order.)

2. I love how this book (as well as his others) takes a close look at the advantages and the disadvantages of the digital advancements available to us. I appreciate the dual viewpoints of whether or not certain advancements should be developed or implemented just because we can and what the consequences may be if we do or don’t use the technology available to us.

3. This is an intricate and intelligent thriller. The story is told from the POV of multiple characters, just like his other recent novels. It is not hard to follow, but you do need to pay attention.

4. I thought the ending was good.

Cons

1. Compared to the two previous books, I felt like this one started off a little slow. It took quite a while before the real action started (about 70% in actually)… but once it did, WOW!

2. I had zero connection with any of the Minders. I actually found them to be a bit one-dimensional. This did not ruin the book for me at all, but it was weird that I didn’t really care strongly about any of them.

Summary
I have to admit that I enjoyed The One and The Passengers slightly more than The Minders. I think this is solely because of the two cons I noted above. However, I still consider this a top-notch, high-tech, futuristic, sci-fi thriller and I would recommend it to anyone. I really enjoy the controversial situations Marrs creates in this novels and I look forward to seeing what he comes up with next because I will be first in line to read the next book.

Thank you NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for providing an ebook, which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily.

3.5/5

The Minders by John Marrs is a futuristic, plot driven ride!

In a world where no one can be trusted, hacking happens everyday. The United Kingdom’s government starts a program, implanting all of the country’s secrets in humans. Applicants for the program have to solve a puzzle with the promise of a new life. Obviously, the start of a new life means leaving your current one behind. After an intense training we are left with 5 Minders, living scattered throughout the United Kingdom, trying to live “normal lives” in plain sight, all the while, holding hundreds of years of secrets.

All five of the Minders handle their new lives differently. Some form intense attachments, some struggle to find any attachment to anything. One Minder uses his newly acquired skills to become a vigilante serial killer, one by one ending those who wronged him in his previous life. When one of their own threatens the breakdown of the program, no one, I repeat, no one is safe.

I read The Minders as a stand alone. I wonder had I read The Passengers and or The One first, if that would have broadened my understanding of the world being presented. The majority of the deaths felt very unsatisfying after chapters and chapters of character development.

I would definitely recommend this book to those who love an action packed read!

In The Minders, the UK government is frantic to find a place to hide all their official secrets, including a lot of dirty laundry that includes the truth about Diana’s death. A global hacker collective is just as frantic to expose them. Just taking everything offline didn’t turn out to be enough, so the UK government turn to a radical proposal: take people with special brains, identified by solving a 3-dimensional puzzle on social media, and implant DNA-encoded beads with the information in their brains, then tell them to cut themselves off from their old lives and lose themselves in the population.

What the participants in this project have in common is that they are all neuro-atypical, with high degrees of synesthesia, a condition that links sensory modes, and that their lives are all utter failures. So much so that leaving everything behind, having your emotional and physical sensations dulled, and getting a bead in your brain seems like a good deal. The government puts them through extensive physical and psychological training before kicking them out the door. So, what could go wrong?

Someone is hunting them down and killing them, for starters.

Marrs novel plays with changes in social technology but as it is set mostly in rural England, there’s not a lot of change in culture. The novel follows each of the subjects as they try to slip into new lives without getting involved with anyone, and pretty much failing miserably. Then there’s the killer.

It’s an interesting read. The publisher has The Minders under “Mystery & Thrillers,” but any story set a decade or two in the future about five people whose brains are being used by the Briitsh government as a mobile repository for the most closely-guarded official secrets, in a culture where everyone is obsessed with finding their perfect DNA match sounds like science fiction to me. At least for the next fifteen minutes, until the real world catches up with the story.

I am constantly awed by how creative Marrs is with these stories! The One will always be my favorite of his, but The Minders did not disappoint. Fans of his writing will recognize and appreciate the quick-witted style and easy draw of the characters.

Fair warning, there are a good many references to the previous two books, which could either feel like coming home or like you're dropped into someone else's inside jokes, depending on whether you're familiar with his work.

In the U.K., they have come up with a revolutionary plan to prevent hacking and keep information safe. They have chosen five "Minders".... people who are willing to walk away from everything and everyone and start fresh, and the country's most classified information has been turned into genetic code, and implanted into their head.

This book was mind-blowing, terrifying, and kept me on the edge of my seat. I love this author's books and this one definitely did not disappoint! I will suggest that if you haven't already read "The One" and "The Passengers" you might want to read those first, just because he references them so many times throughout the book. This is perfect for sci-fi and thriller fans alike, since there is the futuristic element but there is also a lot of high-stakes action throughout. I highly recommend this one!

The Minders was the perfect combination of The One and The Passengers and is already on my top ten favorite books for this year. This book checks off all the boxes you'd want in a thriller. Alternating perspectives, huge twists, interesting characters, originality, and constantly making you turn pages.

I read The One and The Passengers in preparation for this book and I'm so happy that I did. While you don't necessarily need to know the previous books to read this, there's a lot of characters/concepts that are from the same "universe" of John Marrs' books. All three of them are great reads anyways.

The perfect word to describe The Minders is "daring". Our grand finale with the final twist was huge and took me a few minutes just to calibrate everything that was going on. You might need to suspend your disbelief at times because of this crazy modern world, but it does beg interesting questions about our trust in technology. If basically any piece of technology is liable to being hacked, what's the next best option? Can we trust mentally and physically trained humans with our government secrets? Like you guessed, the answer is most probably a no.

What makes The Minders a lot better than Passengers and One is that it takes the best parts of both and mashes them together. The One, like The Minders, has around six perspectives that we jump between. The difference is that The Minder's has an interconnected plot while The One was mostly a bunch of scattered "what if" scenarios. And while it's more similar to The Passengers, it was refreshing to change between these different settings and characters rather than being limited to a few cars the entire novel.

This read was the perfect culmination for January, and now I might have to check out What Lies Between Us and The Good Samaritan.

In THE MINDERS, by John Marrs, five people are entrusted with government secrets inserted into their heads for safekeeping. With blind faith and little evidence of the data's or the host's safety, the five are trained how to protect themselves and their secrets. Nothing goes quite as expected and the question becomes will any of them survive and will the governmental secrets be lost forever.
Set in the near future, THE MINDERS connects to societal suspicion that their are so many governmental secrets and so many conspirators that want to get their hands on them. As technology makes accessing information easier, it forces government to find new ways to protect that information from the wrong people. While the comment on government and secrets is prevalent throughout, Marrs couples that by introducing some really special characters with very different personalities that all become intertwined in this cloak and dagger plot where more lies are told than truths. In order for any of five to survive, they all realize the most important ability they were taught is analyzing the truthfulness of a situation and responding appropriately. How do they avoid revealing themselves without creating a cause for suspicion and how to they determine who is real and who is pretending? Marrs not only crafts the plot to build to a climax, but as the five start to become unhinged, the reader start to feel their lack of control at moments when the reader wishes they had more control.
Really exciting and challenging to one's perception of government, THE MINDERS is timely, action-packed, and rewardingly complex book that unwinds into a truth by the end that the reader won't see coming.

Set in a future world, the UK's cyber security is compromised and there seems to be no traditional safe way to keep it from the Hacking Collective. If breached, not only will the country's secrets be exposed, but thousands if not millions of lives will be lost in terrorist attacks and as a result of the ensuing anarchy. Desperate and terrified to fail her country, the British Prime Minister reluctantly agrees to a radical new approach to keep the data safe - storing it in the bodies and minds of its own citizens.

Several 'Minders' are chosen based on a particular skill set they show after completing an online quiz and then undergoing several more extensive tests. The Minders are otherwise ordinary citizens and are completely unknown to anyone except the leader of the Minders. We follow five characters- Flick, Sinead, Charlie, Bruno, and Emilia - as they navigate their new worlds and new identities while possessing the country's darkest and most private secrets.

Much of the novel is a character study of how the implantation of the data changes the individuals - Charlie has lost all feeling, physical, emotional or otherwise, and pushes himself farther and farther in an attempt to gain back what he feels he lost; Bruno has turned into a merciless killer seeking revenge for the wrongs he suffered during his "previous" life; Flick has finally been given a second chance, able to move on from the stigma of her serial killer Match; and Sinead has escaped the emotional abuse of her husband and finds herself happy and independent for the first time she can remember.

It took a bit to get used to each character as the chapters are very short and we alternate from character to character. Marrs was good about dropping subtle clues to remind the reader who each character was and they became more distinct to me over time. Having so many characters made it hard to put the book down as many chapters were left with cliffhangers and left us cycling through all the other individuals before returning to that piece of the storyline. However, there were also some drawbacks to having so many lead characters. I often found myself forgetting how a particular cliff hanger wrapped up or where in a plot line we left off with a particular character. It also made it difficult to form strong connections to any particular individual and I found myself more drawn to some storylines than others.

I loved that the novel picked up on themes from Marrs' other work - The One and The Passengers - though this isn't a series and you don't need to read those others to understand what's going on. However, if you've read either of those novels and loved them, you will absolutely love this book too as it's written in a very similar style.

Thank you to Berkley and NetGalley for a copy of this novel.

How does a country guarantee that it can keep its secrets in a technology age that doesn't feel safe? In this version of Britain, there is a group of people who are concerned about the safety of country secrets, so a team of people have come up with an interesting solution - put the country secrets into people and hopefully within five years they can come up with a long term solution that is impenetrable.

This book takes place in the same "world" as The Passengers and The One, not a series, but reading those two first could help. I had read The Passengers before reading this book, but not The One and now I want to go back and get that one done. I think there were things about that book embedded in this one that I may have missed, but it didn't take away from my overall reading.

Told through the perspective of the actual minders before their lives are changed and then after as they leave everything behind to keep the country's secrets. It was interesting to see very different people react to an extreme situation in very different ways - I did have to make notes as we met each character, so I could ensure that I kept them straight throughout.

I love the combination this book makes with a mystery with fantastic pacing, but a science fiction dystopian feel that allows me to dip my toes into the science fiction scene and enjoy a wild ride. I hope to read more from John Marrs as his books keep me guessing while pushing my boundaries.

Is this new John Marr’s book a compulsive, propulsive read, as usual? Yes. Is it confusing and implausible? Yes. Will it inspire you or depress you? Definitely depress. It builds on conspiracy ideas of the Deep State, the government is out to get us, life is hopeless, you know, all the good stuff. In this one, post his previous book The One, the government has hidden all their secrets in the brains of five Minders, and the Hackers want to find them. Yeah, fun stuff. I’m not a believer in all that conspiracy garbage - it reminds me of the Trump cult and their inability to understand truth and facts. I’m not a nihilist. I like to hope and believe in the inherent goodness of others. While I thought this book could be mindless entertainment, instead it just put me in a deep dark hole. This book just was not for me yet I’m sure others will enjoy this page turner.

The premise sounded intriguing but didn't quite deliver. A small group of people are recruited to become minders of the UKs secrets through an advertised mind bender puzzle. Each minder goes to a new place with a new identity. There is a terrorist group looking for them. Full of action and various relationships each minder has a story. Some holes in the plot but still an imaginative read.

Copy provided by the publisher and NetGalley

4.5 Stars

I am not a big Science-Fiction fan but if John Marrs writes it I am definitely willing to give it a go. What he is able to come up with just blows my mind and this was such an engrossing story that kept my interest throughout. I mean right from the blurb... <i>"five strangers guard government secrets, but only four can be trusted."</i> What could possibly go wrong? I love how he incorporated the plot of two of his other books into this one. But by no means do you need to read them first, this is one hundred percent a stand alone novel.

If you want a book that will blow your mind, this is the one for you. Electric, entertaining, intellectually boggling, and heartfelt. This is a Science-Fiction tale with personal trauma at the core...But more than that, it is a wild ride that will make your mouth fall open with each turning of the page. WTF did I just read will be an understatement, and if you think the story can't get any worse, keep reading...your mind will be totally blown. This was a great read. It makes you question the road not taken and how our choices define who we are. I can’t wait to read more by this fabulous author as John Marrs is a Technothriller master.

Will provide a shout out on Instagram and FB page on release date.

How would you like to hold all the world's knowledge in your head........and people want to get at those secrets? Scary!

I was so excited to see that John Marrs had another book coming out. Once again we are thrust into the very near future and technology and all its glory!!!! This story, again, makes one really think about who is behind technology and what could very easily happen if we do not keep in check what people are doing. This is an engaging and fast passed book, you will end up cheering for characters that in the beginning you may not even like. I will be recommending this for book club and to anyone that maybe in a reading funk! Loved this book!!!

Read The One and The Passengers before this book to get the full experience. While the stories can be read separately, there are a lot of connections between the three, and the technology and conspiracies escalate with each book.

This story has heart and intrigue, and the action ramps up fast after all the characters are introduced. There are so many things you won't see coming, and each chapter gives you a little shock. It's what I love about Marrs's style and will keep me coming back to his books.