DNF 33%

Not for me.
Didn't enjoy the main character or the idea of the story, like I originally thought -sadly.

I loved the cover of this book, that is what drew me in but the story took a while to get to the point and I started losing interest. I think if it was a physical book, I might have enjoyed it more, so I would try it again

I just really enjoyed this book. It was just really easy to get lost in this book. I will definitely be reading more by this author.

Incognito picked up shortly after the events of Keystone (which I absolutely loved) and took us on another wild ride of questionable loyalties, heists and lies. The entire concept of this world is so cool and fascinating. There is just enough of our current reality to see how we could actually be in this situation one day. I loved Ellie and Garrett in the last one and continue to love them here. I got a little lost at times but gosh this was such a fun read. Cannot wait to read book 3! I need answers.

In the virtual utopia of the Simulation, everyone will live peacefully and without fear or needs—at least that’s how they’re selling it. But the government plans to use this program to take control of the entire human race. Elisha Dewitt has just been given her first mission to help prevent this, and she’s ready to prove she can go incognito just as well as any other master thief.

Breaking and entering? No sweat. She’s done worse. Stealing a cassette tape from the museum vaults will be easy—in, out, done—until he shows up...and everything gets way more complicated. Garrett Alexander just has that effect.

Nothing is as it seems, and a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse begins with Garrett, her rival and match in every way. Not knowing who she can trust, Elisha decides it’s up to her to rescue everyone—even Garrett—before the world as she knows it comes to a brutal end.

The Keystone series is best enjoyed in order.
Reading Order:
Book #1 Keystone
Book #2 Incognito


Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC! What a roller coaster book! I enjoy it just fine like the first book also

More heists, more boy drama, and just trying to save free will into the world, just another day for Ella (now Elisha Dewitt) Karmen also called Ellie. Picking up where the first book left off, Ellie is doing heists by herself after her crush/partner Garrett up and abandoned her in a park and has never shown up again for months. Then on her current heists he suddenly appears and tells her to trust him before disappearing again. Ellie is tasked with a new mission of infiltrating a school and pretending to be twins with a girl she absolutely loathes while dealing with her ex Nash who wants to win her back and discovering that Garrett has been undercover for months in a relationship with another girl at the same school she will working at. This book is really similar to the first one in which there is lots of heists, romance drama, and Ellie dealing with trying to figure out who to trust while trying to keep her identity a secret.

Well written, I did get a little lost as everyone seems to have at least two identities, that keep changing along with alliances. In the end it was an exciting book that left me on pins and needles.

I received an advance reader copy in exchange for a fair review.

A solid sequel to the first book, Keystone. Loved learning more about Ella’s brain and how it works compared to others as well as the Super Brain. Can’t wait for the third book.

Elisha Dewitt, once an Influencer now a cat burgler for Keystone, is sent to steal a secret tape from Andy Warhol’s own collection. An interview he did with Jackie Kennedy shortly after JFK’s assassination, kept hidden well after the rest of the tapes were made. Keystone wants it, whether to preserve it as they do so much other media or for the potentially dangerous secrets it holds, and they want it badly enough to send an uninitiated thief after it. It would be an easy job. Easy for Elisha to work her way into one of the museum worker’s heart and access to his credentials. Easy to find the box the tape is sealed in and pick it apart with surgical efficiency. Easy to get out and back to base. Easy if not for Garrett Alexander, her rival and former partner, showing up in the middle of her heist and making off with the tape. It is a defeat but not nearly the set back she expects as a new job, her initiation heist with a team of other skilled Keystone members, is announced almost immediately. All the five of them have to do is infiltrate a college full of engineers and cutting edge security, fool any number of tests, and take back a book. A journal. Elisha’s journal from her previous life, an item that might be key to preventing the breakthrough necessary for the government to get their simulation online and begin fully uploading peoples’ minds to it. This heist might be the only thing keeping humanity and the world from falling fully to corporate control, the only thing keeping Garrett from being lost to the simulation.

I feel like I cannot fairly review Katie Delahanty’s Incognito for a couple of reasons. One of the bigger of those reasons is that I did not realize, somehow, that it was the second book in a series until I had finished it and gotten into the ads for other Entagled Teen books. It being the second in a series rather than the first, as I had assumed for most of its page space, unfortunately makes me much less likely to be kind to it. Which feels deeply unfair, so I am going to try and keep my review mostly to my thoughts as established prior to realizing it is a sequel.

That said, given how Incognito is laid out and its plot, I do not find that I needed to have read Keystone to follow the plot and understand the characters. My early thought was that the characterization was shockingly good compared to the rest of the writing, with Elisha’s relationships with other characters being cleanly set and readily defined and a nice smattering of in jokes and references to previous adventures that felt well thought out. That said, Elisha’s desperate attraction to Garrett and continuing distraction from the plot in favor of worrying over him and her feelings for him and if she can or cannot trust him was a massive continuing blow to this characterization. I also really did not feel like we were given enough room to really care about the secondary characters and the teammates who were acting as support and Bix the disguise specialist. I have actually forgotten most of the characters’ names at this point because while their early characterization is solid the follow through is pretty terrible.

Garrett is everything. Elisha is so distracted by him. By trying to decide if she can trust him or not. By trying to see through to the real him beneath his disguise as Beau the lab assistant. By finding him desperately hot and having her brain go buzzy around him. Garrett is a sucking hole that the plot fell into and could not escape until somewhere between the halfway and third quarter of the book when everything has to suddenly rush forward to the climax so we can have the set up for the next book and Elisha’s continuing adventures. The romance is bad here. The flat kind of bad where it feels like Delahanty did not think that the reader would understand just how about Garrett Elisha was if it was not mentioned every couple of pages but also she did not want to do anything with the relationship beyond the opening heist and a fairly major chunk of the later book that replaced what should have been a much more interesting series of events with what is essentially a team building exercise for Elisha and Garret.

A lot of the writing was a similar flat sort of bad. It felt like Delahanty was not sure how intelligent her readers might be and chose to write down to them to avoid confusing anyone. After the starter heist the rest of the book’s first half was a lot of nothing as Elisha’s team decides how they will split the job and it is hammered into the reader’s head that Nash cannot be trusted and is an utter creep and that another character is going to do something underhanded eventually. It did introduce the relevant people and places on the campus and the reader was informed fairly extensively about Elisha’s quantum intuition and the rules she is under about letting her team in on her history and that the journal is, in fact, her journal. But it all felt very slow, very ponderous, and a lot of what was set up did a fantastic job of killing any tension the plot might have built up. The quantum intuition means that Elisha basically has an inbuilt cheat code for if someone is trustworthy or not, and it has to be right all the time because it is a core component for the plot and why the shadowy government wanted her journal for the simulation research, but then Elisha is always right about if a character or situation can be trusted or will work so there is no room for surprise. But there was plenty of room, at least in my unfinished ARC copy, for Elisha to be flat out told the facts of a plot point and then a couple of chapters later for her quantum intuition to tell her exactly what she had already been told. Not for her to use the quantum intuition to dodge telling her team that she had already been informed of the plot point mind, but for her to honestly intuit to herself the details of this plot point that she had already been told. This happened at least twice.

Incognito is a book that I really wish I had been right about when I assumed that it was the first book in a series and likely one of the first books by the author. It had so many ideas that could have been good. The world building felt more than a touch like the author’s first attempt at cyberpunk, and more than a touch like Delahanty has only skimmed the surface on what she wants to say with the world building, but the core ideas for it were solid enough that they could have been something really good with a bit more work. The characters felt like they could have been really great if they were given more space to interact and do things on page, I wanted to care about them and see how each of them had specialized for the heist. I wish there had been more varied references to old media and from a wider time span, Keystone is supposed to be stealing and preserving old media so it needs to be shown better throughout. It felt bad that the only references we really saw for most of the book were to The Princess Bride, and tied into the romance because of course. The tech guy could have referenced classic sci-fi or the disguise specialist could have referenced Bacall or Hepburn. Just more to show that these kids in 20X6 are interacting with the media they’re preserving and that that media is more than the smattering of 80’s nostalgia titles that got dropped.

This was a book where I had a couple of major frustrations and then a dozen minor issues. And I could have if not forgiven then been less frustrated with a first in a series book that was written down to its audience and dithered away much of its page space while stubbornly holding time for the next book to have a major rescue plot. There were so many things at the very end of this book that could have so easily been so much better if they had been introduced earlier and allowed time to simmer and develop. So many things that could have been better handled if the reader was shown more of Elisha and her team meeting and trying to work around Nash and the party member they didn’t trust with their own plans while Elisha weighs if she should spill her secrets to them or not. But those things weren’t handled better and this is the second book in a series from an author who has written four other books. The thing is, the ending did leave me wondering how Elisha would manage to solve the plot and save her friends and the world in the next book, which saved this from being a one star book but did not leave me wondering enough to go back for the next one. Incognito gets a two out of five from me, it has a lot of ideas that could have been solid but fritters them away with a terribly flat romance and a whole lot of pages doing a whole lot of nothing.

I did wanted to read it. But I haven’t read the first one.
So... I think it’s a good book. Read it. If you reas the first one.

I was very happy to receive this ARC! I really enjoyed its narration, the characters and the way the author wrote something so smart. Definitely, one of my reread choices!

Ok! So I started this book yesterday and couldn't put it down. The story was fascinating, intriguing, and let the reader wanting more.

If you are looking for something really good to read, this book is for you. This is the kind of book you don't know you need until you read it.

So get comfy, grab a cup of tea, and be ready to been taken into this amazing world.

DNF

I want to say thank you so much to Raincoast Books for providing me with a review copy, I'm so sorry that I didn't love it!

Unfortunately I stopped reading at about 20%. I just could not get into this book. The characters and storyline just weren't drawing me in. I hope that others enjoy this book, but it wasn't for me.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing me an ARC of this book.

DNF @ 20%. Couldn't get into this book at all.

Thank you to NetGalley and Entangled Publishing for providing me with a copy of this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is the second book in a series, and I loved it. Basically, Elisha (in her former life) was an Influencer like her parents, and her life is constantly on show. She uncovers some things and decides to fake her death, which is when she joins Keystone.

This book drops us right in the middle of a museum heist and it did take me a few chapters to orient myself - there’s no introduction or recap, so if you’ve not read the first book then you will definitely get lost. Elisha spends her time wondering if her two love interests - Garrett and Nash - are trustworthy as she navigates the museum heist and then moves onto a group heist at a University involving her old notebook and the potential of a “super brain” which made me think of The Matrix. It’s not all fun and games though - the stakes are very high and Elisha uncovers some shocking secrets before the cliffhanger ending.

Like the first, I really enjoyed this instalment. The premise doesn’t sound particularly plausible - a bunch of teens playing at being rogues, freckles that can scramble facial recognition, and umbrellas that can shield you from cameras but....real people will think you’re super dodgy holding them. However, it all sounds totally plausible within the confines of this story. I can feel how Elisha is torn between these two guys who each seem plausible but are keeping secrets, and why she feels like she can’t completely trust anyone. The author really ramps up the tension towards the ending which does NOT disappoint. I can’t wait for the next book!

Keystone was one of my favorite books last year, and I am so glad the sequel has arrived. It's always nice to have the gang back together again.

I loved that Incognito jumps right into the action, following through on the new heist our main character Elisha sent on at the end of Keystone. We get to travel to some new locations, which is always cool, and I find the technology of this fancy futuristic world really fascinating.

I will say we spend a lot of time talking and thinking about Elisha's instincts, especially
in relation to her feelings toward her love interest which is fine, in moderation. Still, at a certain point, it kind of felt obsessive, and it did start to get annoying. Considering there were so many other exciting things going on in the story, I just think a little less time spent on the feelings would have increased my enjoyment.

Overall though, I thought this was a really good book. There were lots of big reveals; we got to find out where a lot of our characters' loyalties lie, and that ending was...intense. I am very excited about what's to come.

Thank you, Entangled Publishing, Katie Delahanty, and NetGalley for allowing me the opportunity to review this book!

I received this book in exchange of a honest review. I cannot get enough of the Keystone series! I just love these books and can't wait for the story to continue. Highly recommend!!

I cannot get enough of the Keystone series! I just love these books and can't wait for the story to continue. Highly recommend!!

I have to admit that I haven’t read the first book and I hoped that it would be okay but in the end it would have been nice if I had read the first book. I was confused most of the time, but it did not take away the main enjoyment I felt during the whole reading journey.

The book takes place in a futuristic world which was kind of great to read about because it isn’t the usual dystopian novel, at least it didn’t feel that way. I was lost at some parts of the story, but I guess that it was mainly because I haven’t read book one.

I loved the fact that there were a lot of twists. Twists I didn’t expect and that made my hands practically glued to my Kindle. The author managed to suck me into this story pretty quickly. The fact that there was also a huge cliffhanger at the end just made the whole book even more great.

I did have a few difficulties with the writing style at the beginning but once I got used to it and became comfortable around it, it was okay. The next time I will definitely read Keystone and will give this one another try. And maybe even then I am able to give it 5 stars. Who knows?

Have been waiting for this book and was not disappointed in the least! Love this author, love this publisher and could not put down this book! What can I say without spoilers? Just read this book please. It is fantastic! Highly anticipated for a reason. You will live it!