readingwithwrin
Written on Jul 7, 2020
Thank you to Netgalley and Margot Harrison for an e-copy in exchange for my honest review.
"The only winning move is not to play."
Harrison has done it again with the Glare. Like her first book The Killer In Me, this book had me on the edge of my seat needing to know what was happening and what was causing it.
Hedda has lived tech-free since the age of six when something happened to scare him, mom, into taking them as far away from the city, and tech-life as possible. Now at the age of sixteen, Hedda is having the opportunity to go and live with her dad who is big into tech as he is a programmer while her mom goes and takes care of a friend. While Hedda is being given freedom her mom still wants her to stay as tech-free as possible... Well, I think we can all guess how quickly that want goes out the window as soon as Hedda gets the opportunity to be like other teens her age.
Once back to 'civilized life' Hedda gets her hands on some tech thanks to her dad and step-mom Erika. Erika is the main parental figure in Hedda's life now as her dad is a very busy man. So Erika is the one we see helping her get adjusted to being back with tech and around her old friends again that she hasn't seen since she was six. While some things have changed, others haven't.
Hedda ends up stumbling upon the game The Glare and because she has no idea what to do with it she asks her old friends for some help. This is when the chaos starts happening and the game starts getting all too real. People start getting jumpy at any type of electronic noise, and others start trying to figure out why it suddenly stops after a certain point. One thing they all have in common though is a fear of what they can't undo.
Overall this book is terrifying to a certain extent. Harrison always manages to make her books feel very real and she did it again with this one. You can feel the fear that Hedda and her friends are experiencing while also wanting to know what is happening, and why it's happening all over again like it did ten years ago. I loved Hedda's step-mom and brother and the interactions they had. It was so nice to see an involved parent for a change in a young adult book, especially a step-parent not being made the enemy for a change.
The ending was one that I wasn't expecting and I loved that. I figured out what was happening at the same time Hedda did. Harrison is always able to surprise me and scare the daylights out of me when it comes to her books and I love that!
There is so much packed into The Glare that I know I am going to have to read the finished copy when it comes out to catch everything that happened.