Book was meh. Could have been flushed out a lot more. ( )

When John Hawke leaves for work as a journalist, he has no idea that his world will dramatically change. However, when James Weller, the supposed focus of his story, grants him an interview, he warns Hawk that his former employer, Eclipse, is changing some of his work and not for the better. The rest of the book follows the downward spiral as technology ceases to function as it should, and Hawke tries to get back to his family. I loved the premise of this book, but it just didn't seem to live up to the ideas. There were several elements including the dangerous next door neighbor and his sons possible autism that seemed very marginal and undeveloped while other parts were repetitious and/or described minutely leaving a feeling of unevenness and the need for better editing. ( )

A riveting read with a premise real enough to be truly scary. Day One begins like any ordinary day, with annoyances that gradually increase in tempo and seriousness. The action subsequently moves right along, gaining in intensity as a journalist struggles to piece together the truth of what is happening. As Manhattan's bridges and tunnels collapse and widespread panic takes hold, his determination to escape the island and get home to his threatened family increases. If he can manage that, can he find a safe place for them? Is there a way to contact the people left after the horrific disaster and persuade them to the hard choices that will remedy the unthinkable?

Day One is a well-paced thriller that will have you rethinking computer connections and malware in a new light, as well as questioning what effect the military can have on innovations that start out with beneficence in mind.

The only negatives have to do with AI that is much too human (a common error) and AI powers that are beyond belief (cars can be unlocked remotely but not driven to smash into people and things). ( )

Due to copy and paste, formatting has been lost.

I really thought that I would like Day One. I'm a member of the tin foil hat group, so the idea wasn't really that implausible to me, and I thought that it would a great addition to the dystopian genre. I was a tad bit wrong there - unfortunately, I just didn't love this one. It was okay, it just wasn't what I was looking for.

Let's start with our main character, Hawke. I just couldn't connect with him. He was too nervous, too jumpy. I also probably had a hard time connecting with him because he's a guy. Let's just throw that out there. He just wasn't the take-charge, bad-ass guy that I would want around in this situation.

The secondary characters all fell really flat for me as well - they were just names on a page. There was a time when I couldn't even differentiate between them, but as the book wore on... they started to disappear, so it became a lot easier. They weren't any better, but there wasn't near as many.

But I have got to move on from the characters, I'm just depressing myself by talking about them. Let's move on to the storyline - an invisible enemy that can take anyone down with a computer chip. If it has an internet connection, it's on to you. It knows exactly where you're at, and what it needs to do to take you down. Probable.

But let's add this tiny SPOILER-it's just a computer. A computer that is thinking and making decisions for itself - that's the improbable part. I believe that machines are tracking you, and that people can track you using them... but machines just can't think on their own. There is no algorithm that they can be taught that will make them think on their own. There's always somebody behind the desk.-SPOILER END.

That spoiler makes it all improbable. This is where my freaked-outed-ness went downhill. Because at that point, the story just lost all of it's meaning for me. Before the reveal, I obviously assumed that it was a covert government operation or something, when it wasn't.

Another pet peeve of mine [in this book] was the overload of details. I generally like details, but there came a point when it just became too much. The flashbacks were interesting, and they added some depth to Hawke, but I feel like that was their only purpose. I never learned any information that helped with the storyline from these, so I'm assuming that it was only to add depth.

Now I ask... what is the point? Day One ends with a fairly open ending, and I'm honestly not even sure how we got there. All in all, this one just wasn't for me. ( )

*I received this ARC via goodreads first reads*
Journalist John Hawke is pursuing the story that will save his troubled career. When James Weller, founder of a startup technology company, agrees to let Hawke write a story about his accomplishments Hawke sees it as an opportunity to uncover a scandal. What should be a normal day on the path to his redemption turns into a nightmare. Everything connected to the internet or with a computer chip goes haywire. He soon discovers things are not only going wrong at the office when his wife calls screaming that someone is trying to break into their apartment. While just managing to get out of the office with his life he finds himself with a small group of survivors who try to navigate through the broken city only to realize that they are in mortal danger making getting home to his pregnant wife and son a perilous priority.
As someone who is not very tech savvy I feared I would be in over my head while reading this, but was pleasantly surprised. I did not once find myself lost and scratching my head. This novel is very fast paced with quite a bit of action making it a thrill to read. The plot is an idea that’s been around for awhile but the author’s managed to make feel different. Even though this is what I would consider a science fiction thriller there is this great story about family under the skin that bleeds through from the beginning. The characters are why I did not give this one 5 stars. Characters are a big deal to me as a reader. I need to love or hate them and I was indifferent to this cast. This does seem to be my complaint with a lot of thrillers that are fast paced. Overall I really liked this novel and will definitely recommend it, especially to science fiction and thriller fans. ( )