Needs polishing and elaboration. My kindle only went up to Loc 210 so it was rather short and abrupt. WIth more work, it could be spectacular. The ideas are there.

I am very iffy on the star rating. If the book was edited better, it may have a higher rating but no promises. I understand what the story is, I think the story would be better If it was a novel, not a short story. It's a good book to a certain extent. But I love one sentence at the end of the book, that made me laugh so hard. The alien told the human, " thank you for not being a nazi". That made me laugh so hard.

I received a free copy of the book and is voluntarily writing a review

Under The Phone by Nicholas Leonard Ivey is a short sci-fi story.

First, let me thank NetGalley, the publisher SFS, BookReviewBuzz,  and of course the author, for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.


My Synopsis:   (No major reveals, but if concerned, skip to My Opinions)
Jack (a computer programmer) and Stacy (a psychologist) move to Sherly Pointe.  He will be working for a high tech company, and she has a job at the hospital.

The old mining town of Sherly Pointe has a rather strange reputation with conspiracy theorists...there are problems with the water, there are UFO sightings, it's a government installation....

Jack and Stacy are not too concerned, until things start happening, and one of Jack's teamworkers ends up missing.


My Opinions:   
First, I am really glad this was a short story.  This was probably the poorest editing job I have EVER encountered, so I am going to try really hard to not let that affect my review of the book.

The premise of a world takeover through our cell phones was interesting.  However, the "pyramids" and the triangle UFO's may have needed a little further explanation.  The premise sort of fell apart.

The book seemed really disjointed, and conversations seemed to be missing pieces. There are no real introductions of people.  A new character Bubba shows up and his first words were "I told too" (I assume it meant I told you), but who was he talking to?  Because it was Jack who responded, and as far as I could tell they had never met.  I realize in a short story it is difficult for the characters to have any real depth, but there was no depth at all to anyone.  Even Jack and Stacy were just shallow...

Anyway, I think this one missed the mark with me, and I realize short stories are sometimes hard to get into, but this one really didn't work.  If this wasn't a NetGalley book, I may not review it at all, because I hate giving a poor review.  However, others have read and reviewed in a number of places, so.....I would probably only give it 1 star, but am upping it to 2 stars because I think part of the problem was the editing that made the whole thing worse, (although other reasons can be noted above).

Anyway,  these are just my opinions, maybe you'll enjoy it!

Under the Phone was an early copy from SFS Publishing, and received from NetGalley.

Undoubtedly this is a case of "It's not you, it's me" but I wasn't wild about this short story. I tried. I really did. Nevertheless, the style of writing kept me from following the storyline. There were so many grammatical errors that my head was spinning. Where was the punctuation?? Where were the capital letters?? I felt as though I would scream if I had to read "your" instead of "you're," one more time. FYI, this is the way the story is intentionally written, rather than sloppy editing. There is also quite a bit of swearing, for those who are offended by that. (Ha! What does that say about me that the grammatical errors bothered me more than the swearing did?)

In any case, I feel Under the Phone will probably be appreciated by a different target audience than the old-fashioned one I'm in.

I found this to be an interesting premise for a story as everyone has a smartphone and there are so many conspiracy theories that go around about them that this could be viable in some instances. I found that the characters were reasonably well developed and I found myself liking them but I think they needed more development, however, I also recognise that this is a short story so the level of development is sometimes wuite small anyway.
i found the writing style qute hard to get into but I would like to check more out from this author as it may have just been that the ahort story didnt work for me.

An interesting short story which involves a plot to take over the world through smartphones which connect to people’s brains.
However, although the idea is interesting in itself and the characters are likeable, including a gray alien called Bubba who works for the government, the story is not competently written and seems more like a first draft than a completed story.