Audiobook narrated by Katherine Press and Oliver Hembrough

When I finished reading WHAT LIES BETWEEN US by John Marrs, I knew I’d be picking up the author’s next release, though I had no idea just how different it would be. I am not normally a science fiction reader (although I can be swayed, obviously, by an author’s name,) but I found THE MINDERS to be absolutely enthralling. In the future, countries are having a tough time keeping information confidential, as hackers can make their way into anything they design. One country thinks they’re on the cusp of figuring out how to be "unhackable," but they need some lead time to get the ball rolling. An innovative doctor comes up with the idea of implanting this information in people’s brains to give them time. To lure them in, they create a puzzle that’s hard to solve, and then vet the cream of the crop to decide who will carry the information.

This book has several points of view, and I enjoyed all of them. First, there is the documentation from the government team who devises this plan, and then we have the people who are chosen to be the Minders. We get a glimpse of their lives before they become Minders, how very targeted they were, and why they’re so willing to give everything up to start their lives over from scratch and abandon everything they’ve ever known. I was interested in all of their lives, and every time a chapter ended, I couldn’t wait to get back to them even while I was enjoying the next point of view. It was interesting to see what they had to give up to do this, physically and mentally, and it’s clear they weren’t as prepared as they thought. There was one perspective where the character had no idea what was happening to her, and that was pretty cool to have in the midst of everything that was going on. I had a lot of theories about it, and suffice it to say, it didn’t pan out at all the way I thought it was going to.

There were some truly shocking moments in this story that had my jaw-dropping, and I was living for them. Also, as I mentioned, this took place in the future and there was a reference to today that said something like ‘this event took more lives than COVID’ which, reading as COVID-19 is happening, really gives you a unique perspective.

I thought THE MINDERS had a great premise, and after reading other reviewer’s thoughts, I can’t wait to go back and read The One and The Passengers!

Narration: The narrators for the audiobook of THE MINDERS were fantastic. They were both narrating multiple people, but as the points of view were so different, we knew who was who. Katherine Press did a great job with both male and female voices, as did Oliver Hembrough. I hadn’t heard either of them narrate before, but I wouldn’t hesitate to pick up anything they do in the future.