Title: Control Freakz

Author: Michael Evans

Publisher: Palmetto Publishing Group

Pages: 280

Release Date: October 3rd, 2017

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

 

~ Goodreads Synopsis ~

Alone. Abandoned. Threatened. Natalie has lost all hope for a better future. Everything she’s known and everyone she’s ever loved is gone, and it’s up to her to get her old life back. In Michael Evans’s first novel, Control Freakz, Natalie’s journey toward a better life begins.
When Protocol 00 is enacted, Natalie’s family is taken by the government, along with the families of her two best friends, Ethan and Hunter. With nothing to lose, and the threat of government hitmen kidnapping them at any moment, the three must battle to survive in a horrid, post-apocalyptic world run by President Ash and his invasive government. They want answers. And they’re willing to jeopardize everything in desperate pursuit.
Risking ruthless leaders, attempted mind control, and her very existence on the planet, Natalie, along with Hunter and Ethan, will stop at nothing in their quest to regain everything they’ve ever known. Her spirits crushed and her will to live destroyed, Natalie knows everything is dead and gone, and soon she will be, too.
Memories connect us to the past, and can often cause us to long for a better future, but they can drive our minds into a state of hell if a better future is unattainable. Nevertheless, Natalie’s hope for a better a future remains.

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The author told me that f you sign up for his newsletter, you can receive the first four chapters of the book for FREE! You can sign up here.

Quick warning about this book: it has strong language and LOTS of it, so if you are sensitive to cursing, I would highly suggest not picking up this book.

Overall, I did enjoy this book. It was an interesting plot with the mysterious blue pill and the government-gone-bad trope that I actually do like even if it may be used quite often in the dystopian genre, but that’s why it’s used so much – people love it. Also, I did not expect the ending, it was very well thought-out and designed cleverly. As with most of the dystopian books, you can see where the story is going, but the end is definitely surprising, and it was refreshing and really helped the book in general.

Most of this book was written in a kind of stream of consciousness as the main character, Natalie, is pretty stuck in her own head. In some ways this was good, but in other ways not so much because it occurred during action scenes sometimes, and it really slowed down the pace of the action. Also, a lot of what she narrated through the story was plagued with self-pity which is generally a big turn-off for me. I understand she had been through a lot and her life was ruined from then on out, but she regularly just gave up when facing death and would suddenly lay limp until one of her guy friends picked her up and ran away. She was constantly in an internal battle between wanting to die and then not wanting to die – I see that the author was trying to make her confused and scared, but she was far too conflicted in some parts for it to be realistic.

One of my other commentaries on the novel is how erratic each of the main characters were. In the beginning, I could easily see how panicked Natalie was going to be throughout the novel, but I thought it would be ok because her two friends seemed to be more clam and level-headed. Then everyone was running around like they were going to die every waking second – in general, it all seemed a little much and was a little to extravagant. Their emotions felt very solid and detached from who they were so that they all molded into one character with slight differences.

Outside of what I mentioned above, it was really enjoyable. The writing flowed very well and was easy to breeze through. I sat and read nearly 250 pages because it was just so easy to read that I didn’t want to stop once I started.

Let me know down below your thoughts on the book!

Thanks for reading!

Taylor