Publication: 1st April 2019 (eBook); 30th May 2019 (paperback) – Ebury
When someone hacks into the systems of eight self-drive cars, their passengers are set on a fatal collision course.
The passengers are: a TV star, a pregnant young woman, a disabled war hero, an abused wife fleeing her husband, an illegal immigrant, a husband and wife – and parents of two – who are travelling in separate vehicles and a suicidal man. Now the public have to judge who should survive but are the passengers all that they first seem?
I am really happy to welcome you to my stop on the blog tour of THE PASSENGERS, the gripping new novel by John Marrs, and I’d like to thank Tracy Fenton for inviting me to take part and giving me the chance to read this fantastic novel.
In a not-far future, driverless cars have taken over the roads. The government has assured that they are safe and secure until eight strangers are taken hostage inside their own cars by an hacker. Only one of them will survive and a jury and social media will decide who that person will be. The eight hostages were not chosen randomly and, as the hacker reveals all their dark secrets, we see the opinion of the world change as they try to decide who will survive.
THE PASSENGERS is such a terrific and twisty novel. The author takes us in a future world where technological devices have completely taken over people’s lives. They control what they eat, what they buy, what they like and what they don’t like. They keep track of their heartbeats, their blood pressure, and how dry are their eyes. A world where cars drive themselves and choose the best route to take and whether and when to brake at a road accident. This world is really scary, it felt a bit too realistic and it freaked me out the way people rely not only on their electronics, but also on their social media where people don’t seem to realize that they are playing with other people’s lives. It’s a world where people seem to have become robots and lost empathy and feelings for others, where they deem more important what kind of shoes someone’s wearing and not the fact that eight people may die.
I love John’s Marrs writing and his books always keep me glued to the page. This one in particularly kept me literally on the edge of my seat, with its high tension, the many twists that keep coming until the very last page, with its thought-provoking plot, and its complex characters. THE PASSENGERS is a futuristic thriller that will take you completely by surprise, a must-read for 2019!
Book After Book 