"Eruption"

My rating: ★★★★☆

Author: Adrienne Quintana

Series: Eruption duology series (Volume #1)

Genre: Sci-Fi, Thriller, Adult

Page Count: 288 (Paperback)

Release Date: January 13, 2015

Places to order:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Books & Things

About Adrienne:

Adrienne Quintana is the second of nine children born to professional oil artist, John Horejs, and his wife and business partner, Elaine. She spent her early years playing on the banks of the Snake River in southern Idaho while her father built a geodesic dome house. When the family wasn’t traveling around the country to art shows, Adrienne spent many happy hours reading in her unfinished, tent-like bedroom.  Love of reading soon blossomed into a desire to write. If the family’s antiquated computer could be resurrected, a collection of short stories involving local characters and their epic battles with fire-breathing dragons would be sure to entertain.

After completing high school via correspondence, Adrienne studied Music Education at Mesa Community College.  She took an 18 month break to serve a church mission in Montreal, Canada, where she gained invaluable life experiences and a few pounds from the local delicacies.  After the completion of her mission and a month abroad in Europe, Adrienne moved to Utah with the intention of continuing her education at Brigham Young University, but these plans were short-lived when she met her husband-to-be while working at an investment company.  Soon after their marriage, the Quintanas packed up and moved to Minnesota, where Adrienne worked while her husband earned a Law degree.

After four children and a move to Arizona, Adrienne completed her Bachelors of Science and Communication at the University of Phoenix.  In the throes of housekeeping, potty-training, and carpooling, Adrienne discovered that she could find time to accomplish her goals—often in the quiet hours after the children were in bed.  Since her graduation in 2012, those quiet moments have been used to fulfill a life-long dream of becoming a writer.

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Synopsis:

Information terrorism. Complete network blackout. Global panic. Above the chaos, one company rises to restore order, achieving complete political and military takeover: Omnibus.

Stanford graduate and new Omnibus employee Jace Vega faces these sobering images, appearing to show her future, when a cutting-edge Omnibus tablet mysteriously falls into her hands. Reeling from the recent tragic death of her mother, socially reclusive Jace struggles as she carries the weight of this foreknowledge.

When Corey, an acquaintance from Stanford shows up, he becomes central in helping Jace try to stop Omnibus. But because the plan involves getting close to Damien, the charming, smooth son of Omnibus founder, Victor Trent, Jace becomes conflicted with a barrage of new emotions. Both men profess allegiance, but she doesn’t know who she can trust.

As Jace wrestles to understand how to change the future, vivid dreams and waking visions unmask her obscured past and her true identity.  In the ultimate test of self-trust, Jace must harness her unique internal power and use it to stop Omnibus.

My review:

This review is a *NON-SPOILER* review! And a special thanks to Adrienne for sending me a copy of her book in exchange for an honest review and for letting me interview her on my YouTube channel! (See below for the link to the interview!)

"Eruption" is a fantastic, time travel debut novel filled with such suspense and mind-blowing plot twists, it will surely knock you off your feet.

Okay, lets get down to business. First off, this story focuses on the main protagonist, Jace Vega, who is a recent graduate from Stanford University and just landed a job at Omnibus in Minnesota. She works in the PR department of this technological company--which I find really cool since I hope to work in PR (Public Relations in the future!)--and strange things start to happen to her. One day, she comes across a device on a run that is similar to a device being designed and manufactured at Omnibus, but with different modifications and advancements. Little did she know that this device would be the key to saving the future.

Onto the secondary main characters: Damien and Corey. These guys play an important role in solving the mystery in this book with Jace while also being love interests to her. There are plenty of other contributing characters, including Jace's father and Victor Trent (Damien's father). So, lets start with Corey!

Corey graduated from Stanford, just like Jace, and they knew each other (not very well) while they attended college together. But when Jace finds out that they both work for Omnibus, Jace finds this to be too much of a coincidence. He's the first person she shares information with about the strange Omnibus device she found and later, they are working together to figure out this device and the secrets that it holds.

Damien is very different from Corey. For one thing, he happens to be the son of Victor Trent (aka the man who owns Omnibus). And he's also charming and intelligent, because when Jace starts asking around if there's a new device they're working on, Damien figures out that she's hiding something. He (as well as Corey) is faced with the problem of fully gaining Jace's trust, so there's lots of "questioning loyalties" and "keeping secrets" that make this story much more interesting and engaging.

This book has time travel! I haven't read many books with time travel as part of the plot, but the way it was interwoven into this book was incredible! Adrienne's writing style made it easy to see the blend modern day technology (and futuristic technology) with time travel--without making the book feel like there's too much science-fiction. So, to say the least, this book seems like a contemporary novel, but add in some time travel and disasters that befall on the characters later in the book, and presto! It's a novel with an original idea about time travel and includes a crap ton of amazing plot twists!

Besides time travel and futuristic technology, this book also deals with government corruption, which plays a huge roll later in the novel. The first half of the novel deals with Jace figuring out who to trust (Corey or Damien plus a few other characters) and trying to put the clues together that she's been given (won't say what they are because I don't want to spoil anything for anyone!) about future things to come and how she's the one that can stop certain events from happening in the future.

The beginning started off a little slow, but I think Adrienne's intent was to give us, as the readers, a full understanding of the world that she has built and how it's different from our own, while also having us really see Jace's thoughts and the emotional struggle she deals with.

But in the last 50 pages of the book, Adrienne started dropping bombs one after the other--page after page. Then the ending was..... INSANE. I still can't understand (in a good way!) what had happened and why *it* happened! So good!

Overall, I loved this book! It was a little slow in the beginning and had a lot of Jace's thoughts rather than dialogue, but once you past the halfway point, things start to roll and get really interesting. Also, this book may be under the "Adult" category, but I promise that readers who love YA (Young Adult) novels will really enjoy this!

I also interviewed Adrienne on my YouTube channel, so if you want to check it out, I'll leave the link here!