Book Review: Future Lost by Elizabeth Briggs (Future Shock #3)

It’s been a year since Elena and Adam were first recruited by Aether Corporation and six months since they destroyed the accelerator, finally putting an end to Project Chronos and their involvement with Aether. Now they’re trying to move on with their lives. Elena’s in college and Adam is working on making genicote, his cure for cancer, safe for the public.

But genicote has become a dangerous fixation for Adam. He’ll do anything to figure it out, and when he goes missing, Elena realizes that he’s done the unthinkable: he went to Aether for help with the cure. To Elena’s horror, she discovers that Aether has created a new accelerator. Adam betrayed her trust and has traveled into the future to find the fix for his cure, but he didn’t come back when he was supposed to. Desperate to find him, Elena decides to risk future shock and time travels once more.

This future is nothing like they’ve seen before. Someone has weaponized Adam’s cure and created a dangerous pandemic, leading to the destruction of civilization. If Elena can’t find Adam and stop this, everyone is at risk. And someone will do anything to keep her from succeeding.

My Review: 
This is the final book in the Future Shock trilogy and I really enjoyed all of them! 

It is a year since Elena's first trip into the future and six months since she rescued the people who are now her friends.They are vigilant in case Aether is still following them but CEO Vincent appears to be keeping to his world. Elena is taking no chances and is making sure that she, Zahra and Paige are getting training at a gun range so they are ready for anything. It is Adam who is creating the most worry for Elena by dropping out of his studies to obsessively seek to perfect the cure, causing fractures in their relationship. When she confronts Vincent about secret meetings with Adam, he is forced to admit that Adam insisted on a solo mission into the future-but he never came back. Elena now has to confront her fears and go into the future again to find him.

The future that Elena finds is unlike anything that she has ever seen before and she realises that Adam has been changing the future due to his poor decision making in their present. Now she has to rely on help from Future Selfs to not only rescue Adam to fix things back in the present, but to see how she can stop this horrific future from ever becoming a reality.I wasn't sure if the idea of constant time travel would get old as the books continued but I was pleased to note that every single visit to the future is different because of little changes in the present that don't look important. It seems strange to think that something simple like trying to get to a cure quicker than you originally did so you can save people, can end up killing billions around the world. I loved seeing all these different timelines and changed futures through the books.

I enjoyed seeing a lot of the same characters again. I liked the new people that were introduced during the second book and was pleased to see that they were back in surprising ways in this one. It was nice to see Wombat again! I find that character so interesting! The character that I'm really enjoying is Vincent. He is a lot more complex than I expected him to be and it was fun to see several different versions of him through the plot. I must admit that I really could shake Adam at times. He has obviously learned nothing from trying to rush the timeline in book two and this time his mistakes lead to catastrophe.

This time, the future ahead is as grim as Elena could imagine and the story touches on a future apocalypse with mutated infected people, and survivors banding together and trying to survive. When Elena discovers how the apocalypse begins, she knows she has to do whatever it takes to prevent the terrorist attack from happening to ensure that everyone she loves will have a future. I liked the change in direction from the saving themselves in book one, rescue missions in book two to the trying to save the world issue in book three. It added new layers of interest to the series and I very much enjoyed each adventure.

I like that there is no complicated science to bog down the story. I don't need to know how the time travel works, just that it does, so it was good not to have pages of tech to plough through. This is a story about how every little decision we make can change the future in so many ways, as well as being about relationships and doing what it takes to keep loved ones safe. I'll check out wht else the author writes to see if it would suit me as her storytelling in this trilogy was very enjoyable.

Read November 2018.
5 stars.