Override by Heather Anastasiu

Zoe is free. She has escaped the enslavement of the Community, disconnected from the hardware that had controlled her every thought and emotion, and evaded capture by the Chancellor intent on killing her. She is finally free, but she is far from safe.

Zoe and Adrien hide themselves from detection at the Foundation, an academy that trains teen glitchers to fight in the Resistance movement. Together, Zoe and her new team of superhuman fighters must risk their lives to rescue other glitchers and humans from the Chancellor’s control. Challenges abound at every turn, and Adrien, who has become silent, distant, and tormented by his visions of the future, only adds to the growing certainty of defeat. But worst of all, as Zoe’s team fights against impossible odds, distrust and betrayal leads to the terrible discovery that their greatest threat could already be lurking behind the safe walls of the Foundation.

Full of high-adrenaline action and shocking twists, Heather Anastasiu’s Override is an exciting continuation of this popular young adult trilogy. – Goodreads

You should definitely check out my stop on the Override blog tour. Heather Anastasiu talks about what makes a good love interest, and I found it very insightful. There is even a mention of Jack and Rose, which may or may not have caused my stomach to flip flop. I cannot handle Titanic references.

Onto the actual book review. As some of you may know, I loved Glitch. I read it last year when it first came out, and I was one of the people who were raving about it. I was so excited for the sequel, especially after Glitch‘s action packed ending. Override, while I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as Glitch, definitely did not disappoint me. It was fast paced, exciting, and Zoe gets even more badass!

There were more twists and turns in this one, much like there were in Glitch, although I found the plot twists in Override to be a little predictable. I saw most of them – especially the biggest one – coming, and so the reveal that was meant to be surprising kind of fell flat. I still loved how everything came about, though, because it led to some exciting chase scenes and I got to see stuff that I was worried about not seeing in Override. ~Vague statement is trying to be vague.

Throughout Override, Zoe is trying to get the hang of her powers. She’s finding it very difficult, and so she’s not enjoying the training she is having to partake in. I loved these training scenes because I liked seeing how Zoe handled her ability each time. In some scenes she managed to control it a little bit, in others she completely lost control. 

As someone who adores books about powers, abilities, or any sort of special gift, I am very happy to tell you that we get to see much more of those. We look into different kinds of abilities, not just Zoe’s and Adrien’s. We also get to see how people without gifts react to those with them in the outside world. I really enjoyed exploring all these gifts as we were introduced to new characters and relationships, and I even have a new favourite secondary character! But I can’t tell you about him, because you’ll forget *wink*. 

There was a lot less focus on Zoe and Adrien in this one, I found, and more focus on the plot and the action and the powers as a whole. I really liked that Heather switched it up a bit, but without the annoying second book break up that, more often than not, makes no sense at all. The slight conflict between Zoe and Adrien was all very interesting, and I actually found myself enjoying their relationship a lot more than I did in the first book. Especially since certain things happened that kept them from spending every single moment of their time together, which I was quite worried about to begin with.

I really enjoyed the ending, much more so than the ending of Glitch. I felt like more was at stake this time, and as everything was going down I was holding my breath. It was all very suspenseful! And now I can’t wait to read the next book because EEP, it’s going to be so good, I just know it!

Overall, it was missing that special something for me, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to rate Override as Essential, because it definitely is a book that you should read!