I first discovered Kristen Martin purely by chance on YouTube in early 2017, and after several months of watching her writing advice videos I bought The Alpha Drive to see if I would enjoy her writing.

While The Alpha Drive did not end up as one of my favorite books of all time, as a debut, self-published author I think Kristen did an okay job. The Alpha Drive is the product of all the research Kristen did in a world she knew knew nothing about, and she ended up with a fairly professional-looking product. Kristen shows no signs of slowing down, and I hope she will continue to learn and evolve with her books in the future.

Kristen’s cover designs are gorgeous, and that was one of the first things that pulled me into The Alpha Drive. However, after finishing the book, I wasn’t entirely sure how the full cover design fit into the story itself. On the other hand, the entire trilogy is uniform and looks sharp on my bookshelf - something I’m glad Kristen paid attention to, since it is a massive pet peeve of mine if planned series don’t look cohesive. The formatting within the book was consistent, and while I wasn’t entirely sold on her choices of font, I thought the overall image was an appropriate choice for the book.

I did find multiple errors throughout the story, and there were many more plot holes than I felt should have been there. When these plot holes were not addressed by the end of The Alpha Drive, I hoped everything would be fixed in the sequel. But, as a debut author, perhaps these errors could have been caught with more beta readers or another round of edits.

The Alpha Drive itself is not very difficult to read, and you can fly through it fairly quickly. If it wasn’t for some of the more mature themes present, I would recommend this to younger teens. But, at times I felt Emery should have been written a couple years older and entering her first year of college, instead of being placed in a high school. While I don’t have experience with a high school boarding school, the setting read more like a university campus than a high school. The boarding school also almost felt like a convenience for the author, so that Emery could stay isolated and not have to interact as much with her family. Many parts of the story read more like a contemporary novel (especially since the majority of the book is based in a university campus-like setting), but there were still many scenes that jumped into the futuristic dystopian the book promoted.

Finally, it is also quite clear to see where Kristen got her inspiration for this series since many scenes are reminiscent of either the Matrix or Divergent, and Kristen does mention this in several of her videos. Personally, it bugs me when scenes play out similarly to what inspired them, but in each case I could see where Kristen was trying to go.

Overall, I find Kristen’s books to be entertaining to read and great examples of what I would or would not do with my own self-published book.