(Won through a Goodreads giveaway! Thank you to author Jacci Turner for providing me a free e-copy.)

This reads more like a caricature of high school life than the kind of immersive proxy experience I like in my books. Rather than any kind of world-building — even contemporary high school novels have their own quirks and culture, or at the very least unique characters — it’s frequent (though short) infodumps that could be inferred or are irrelevant, built of cliches and archetypes: the “normal” protagonist who’s average-looking (except for her bust, which she hides with baggy sweatshirts) and is uninterested in girly-girl things, the pretty but bitchy and entitled best “friend,” the “edgy, artsy” alternative best friend who wants to be a reporter, the hot senior jock, the clueless exchange student doubling as the female athlete “who could be pretty if she just tried,” cute ambitious Asian boy she meets at the beach (who even has a cousin who does martial arts — also, Asians playing guitar is really not a thing, it’s piano and violin). How quickly technology changes — the information about Snapchat is already outdated (Snaps sent to other people can now be set on an infinite timer instead of maxing out at ten seconds) and that information could have been excluded altogether, on the probably-safe assumption that the reader already knows or could figure out how it works.

Ari is exasperatingly naive, and I’m not sure if the word I’m actually looking for is “sheltered” or “misinformed” but both apply. Choosing sunscreen with a “low number of protection so she could still tan,” being completely unable to understand why her friend might struggle in English (“Did she just not do the reading? Was she bad at writing papers?” There’s more to doing well in class), writing off “a blackness in her very soul” as the depression she’d experienced “off and on for two years in middle school,” boys suck so “maybe she should become a lesbian” followed by a laugh because she’s “not built that way,” simultaneously bothered by her friend’s racist question and confused by the addressee’s reaction, etc, etc. Actually, a lot of the characters say dumb things — like a boy who thinks it’ll be “super easy to fit in” at a university abroad with 10% international students. And I’m not sure how much research was done; I don’t know any Asian families that would cook sweet & sour pork or gong bao/kungpao chicken (points for spelling it phonetically in Mandarin, I guess?) for guests.

The writing itself seems stilted, even a bit juvenile, with primarily short simple sentences, all-caps and exclamation points for emphasis, LOTS of adverbs and synonyms for “said,” some grammar mistakes (especially with commas), and incredible misspellings. Not sure if “ou la oui” some French phrase I don’t know or a misspelling or just made up, or if teenagers anywhere in the country actually refer to their parents as their “folks.” Also, despite clear attempts at diversity (multiple non-white and gay minor characters, Asian love interest), the way it’s approached isn’t great: it’s just mentioned that the character is black or gay, and then they don’t show up again; Ari also propogates stereotypes by wondering whether the two gay guys at her school (one of whom seems to be officially closeted even if “everyone knows”) have dated, and in some of the things she thinks about Clayton and his family.

I applaud the intention behind the premise, but it’s baseball-bat-to-the-head blunt and Hallmark-movie neat. The dean believes them immediately, the police start an anti-cyberbullying initiative and invite her to be spokesperson, the boys involved with the lewd site face significant consequences, Ari literally gets standing ovations for the cafeteria showdown and her speeches at middle schools. It’s just not at all realistic, and I think that greatly undermines the message.