4.5 stars rounded up! Thank you to the publisher for a copy of this galley.
•
John Marrs has become an auto read author for me! In yet another suspense driven book, Marrs leads us into the future. The British government had chosen to protect their secrets in the minds of people.

Loved: The plot was unique and interesting! I was vested in the stories of most (4/5) of the minders! The ending was well done and not too neat and clean. This last twist I did not see coming!

Disliked: it dragged a bit in the middle. I felt the pacing could’ve been a bit better.
•
Overall this is a mind bender and if JM isn’t in your to-read pile, I recommend!

England is concerned about the threat of cyber-terrorism, but the country's brightest scientists think they have a solution. Their plan it to implant the data into human brains, then have the "minders" live off the grid. The program has varying degrees of success. The suspense builds slowly at first, but ratchets up to high-octane terror with every new revelation. I love how Marrs interweaves storylines from "The One" and "Passengers."

John Marrs pulled it off again. A fabulous out–of-the-box thriller certain to leave you speechless.

Five random people…chosen by the government to become minders. Surely you ask... what is a minder? They are individuals willing to have an implant placed in their brains. Shouldn’t be a problem, right? After all, this innocent little implant merely contains all the British documents and secrets the government doesn’t want anyone to get a hold of. Computers and clouds are no longer safe.
Out in cyber-land, there is a group blackmailing countries all over the world for this most valuable information. Britain feels confident they can stay one step ahead by hiding their information is this most unusual fashion until a better and safer solution can be found.

Wow! What a premise...right?! Had my full attention immediately!

Told from the perspectives of all the minders along with one unknown, you’re quickly dropped directly into their now desperate lives and their overwhelming challenges to keep safe.

John Marrs builds on his previous books, The One and The Passengers, in this latest release. While clearly able to stand alone, I highly recommend starting with those previous reads before you open the pages of this latest. I truly think this will give you the most gratifying reading experience.

I must say The One remains my favorite to date (Of course, romance always rules the day.) But this was equally entertaining and a must read for John Marrs' fans.

A buddy read with Susanne
Posted to: https://books-are-a-girls-best-friend...

Thank you to Elisha at Berkley Publishing via NetGalley

Hacking. Everyone knows that computers can be hacked. After all, it happens every day, right?

The British Government, however, has decided to ensure that their top-secret information stays that way, and to do so, they’ve figured out a way to store their data, deep in the minds of 5, extremely brilliant, people who are, therefore, unhackable.

These individuals are known as “The Minders” and now that they’ve had top-secret information implanted inside of their brains, they have to leave their old lives behind and start fresh.

Except for their handler, no one knows who they are, thus they cannot be found, or so they think.

Pulse-pounding, gripping and terrifying, “The Minders” is a brilliant mystery/suspense by John Marrs, who continues to push the envelope by coming up with fresh new ideas. This novel incorporates certain plot points from two of his prior novels (“The One” and “The Passengers”), thus I highly suggest reading those before diving into this one.

While “The Minders” gave me a lot to ponder as someone who works in the Legal/Tech industry and specifically with “electronic discovery” - I was troubled by the fact that the amount of electronic data implanted into an individual’s brain was never mentioned. I couldn’t help but wonder whether gigabytes, terabytes, or pedabytes were implanted. (For instance: 1 gigabyte = one truck full of paper; 1 terabyte = paper from 50,000 trees; and 1 pedabyte, = 250 billion pages of text, and so on) so while I enjoyed this book, the only real issue I had is that it didn’t include a few “key details” that the geek in me so desperately needed.

That being said, this is a solid, character-driven suspense with a fabulous ending. Let me just say that I can’t wait to see what John Marrs comes out with next!

A buddy read with Ms. Kaceey!

A huge thank you to Elisha at Berkley Publishing Group and NetGalley for the arc.

Published on NetGalley and Goodreads on 12.13.20.

*The Minders is apart of the same world as The One and Passengers. I would recommend reading them in order as there are some spoilers in The Minders regarding the other 2 books.*

This book has a beautiful cover! It is definitely a standout. John Marrs is exceptionally good at world building which can be seen in the way he seamlessly connects other 2 books into The Minders. I found The Minders was weaker than its predecessor: The One (I have not read Passengers so I can't comment on that). The characters in The Minders were very unlikeable and I found it hard to connect with them. Personally, the multiple POVs was hard to follow in this book. I didn't feel that any character had any defining attributes so I would struggle with remembering who was who. The first half of the book was interesting but the 2nd half- even though that's when the action kicks in, was not. Overall, I did enjoy reading this book and will pick up Marrs future works!

Thank you to Netgalley for an eARC of The Minders!

Excellent psychological thriller. Set in the future when certain people called “Minders” protect our governments most sensitive information. When the “Minders” security is compromised the results are horrific. With references to “The One” and “The Passengers,” this book is fantastic. I am a fan of all Mr. Marrs books and this is my favorite one yet. Highly recommend.

Having been a fan of Marrs’ for a long time and having also had the opportunity to review his previous two novels <i>The One</i> and <i>The Passengers</i>, I was thrilled to receive this novel from NetGalley and the publishers in advance in exchange for my honest review.

*Note: there are some references to both previous novels mentioned, so readers may want to pick those up first before starting this one*

The Minders have been chosen by the government to take part in a top-secret, classified mission. There are only 5 people out there who know who they are (and they don’t even know about each other). They have been entrusted to keep all of the governments secrets with them — at all costs. They have given up their lives to live anonymously for 5 years. Seems simple enough. But what if one or all are compromised?

I found <i>The Minders</i> to have a very slow start and then pick up a bit in the middle. Unlike Marrs’ previous novels, this one didn’t have as much suspense or intrigue woven into it, though there is a large bit of a twist towards the end.

Pretty good if not very out there. My first experience with John Marrs and I was impressed with this futuristic thriller. I have the one on my tbr list and i'm sad that i didn't realize until much later that i shouldve read it first. Still a great stand alone and a great first impression. A fast paced tale of many twists and turns .

I would like to thank #NetGalley, #RandomHouseUK #Cornerstone, and the author #JohnMarrs for my ARC

Oh this was so good. I'm glad I had already read The One and The Passengers before this. It's not necessary to have read them in order to enjoy this but it definitely helped, so if you haven't read those, I think it's a good idea to read them first if you can. I didn't want this to end. I love this universe John Marrs has created.

I seem to have completely misremembered John Marrs, he just didn’t stick in my memory the right way, Which is to say I wasn’t thinking about the fairly middling The One, but the deliciously nasty What Lies Between Us, when I found and excitedly requested his latest book on Netgalley. That was a mistake, but not a tragic one, because Marrs entertains no matter what, it’s just the degrees of quality of the entertainment that are debatable.
This book is actually very much like The One, in fact it’s a sequel of sorts. It can be perfectly well read as a standalone, but it follows the events of The One and mentions the plot of it often enough that you really shouldn’t read it prior to The One, if you have any intentions of reading The One.
Ok, so that’s the public service warning/good deed of the day. It stands to be mentioned, because the book description doesn’t for some reason. I, in fact, all but forgotten about The One, until this book reminded me. The premise of that book was a DNA based dating service that can definitively find you your soulmate. Intriguing and plausible and all kinds of alarming.
The premise of this book is that to protect the Britain’s greatest secrets from technologically savvy activists collective the country’s Government decides to literally place that knowledge directly into the brains of regular random citizens selected by a newspaper ad puzzle and based on their synesthesia, which is apparently crucial to the process. Preposterous, farfetched and implausible, as premises go. It's inside their minds, so they can mind it...oh, so clever, the minders...woohoo...seriously, though? Wtf kind of plan is that, really?
So once you get past that, you get to follow the individual narratives of the characters as they get on with their lives. The deal is for five years. Imagine that, living with all that knowledge. The Government gave these individuals some training, some coping techniques, new names and papers, loads of money and just set them free on the understanding that they’ll behave, which has got to be the dumbest plan ever to anyone with even a passing interest in social psychology or basic understanding of the way people work.
Needless to say, things don’t go according to plan and soon all sorts of craziness occur, things go from strange and somewhat inconvenient to dangerous and somewhat deadly pretty soon, because, you know, it was such an obviously terrible plan to begin with.
Marrs tries his best to twist and turn the plot this way and that to distract from the fundamental inanity of the premise and the not especially likeable characters and even does a fancy plot twist in the end, but it’s all pretty thin and much too long for what it is.
The book entertains in a popcorn action driven science fiction kind of way, but doesn’t go above that. The One at least tried for something of Black Mirror excellence. This one just doesn’t have the same social relevance or eerie plausibility, albeit there are still oodles of well founded paranoia.
So overall, a perfectly decent read, but nothing great, in fact the least of the three Marrs books I’ve read thus far. It’s just really difficult to get past what might be the dumbest grand premise in recent speculative fiction. Why would you store information this way? Why? It’s like writing down all your secrets and all your passwords and giving it to your, I don’t know, grocery checkout person following the logic that no one would suspect them of having it, so it must be safe then. Anyway…if you get on board with that, you might enjoy the ride after all. Thanks Netgalley.

When I read my first John Marrs book earlier this year I was instantly hooked, and The Minders was another reminder of why I immediately fell in love with his writing style.

There was nonstop action in both The Passengers and The One, so I was surprised by the slow start to The Minders. The first half of the book was mostly background info on the Minders prior to them joining the program followed by their early transition into their new lives. It was still entertaining, but a much slower pace than expected. The book is told from multiple perspectives, allowing us to see things unfold from each of the 5 minders POV. There were some perspectives I found myself enjoying much more than others, but I was interested in them all. Things picked up considerably at the half way point and the second part of the book was full of tension, action, violence, twists and major reveals. The last 25% of the book I could not put down, I was glued to my seat trying to find out what would happen! I really enjoyed the plot twists and didn’t see most of them coming.

The plot overall was very original and I loved all the references to The One and The Passengers. While you wouldn’t have to read those books first, many spoilers from them are revealed and you’d miss any inside remarks to them. I really liked this book and would highly recommend it!

Thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for providing me this eARC in exchange for an honest review.