Nerve

August 20, 2012
Reeling from a recent personal crisis, high school junior Vee is tired of designing costumes and applying makeup backstageâshe wants to be in the spotlight for once. Playing against her sensible character, Vee tries out for Nerve, a racy reality game show fanatically watched online, on phones, and on TV. Debut author Ryan's view of the ridiculousness and pervasiveness of contemporary fame-obsessed culture is not subtle. After Vee pours water over her head while wearing a white top at a coffee shop and yelling, "Cold water makes me hot," she moves on to additional humiliating dares along with her Nerve partner, Ian, all broadcast live to Nerve's paying customers. Ryan's story is thought-provoking and unsettling, though even with the adrenaline rush the game provides, Vee's motivation to keep playingâtaking on increasingly sexual and dangerous tasksârequires a stretch of the imagination. While the ending goes off with a bang and a twist, the theme of doing anything for attention and money (and then expecting privacy) plays out heavily. Ages 14âup. Agent: Ammi-Joan Paquette, Erin Murphy Literary Agency.

August 1, 2012
A girl who's always stage crew, never the star, finds herself in the limelight when she's chosen as a finalist in a disturbing Internet-based reality game. As Vee explains it, NERVE "is basically truth or dare, without the truth part," in which players are Watched by those who pay a fee to observe and a premium to record the game. Tired of always playing it safe, she performs an audition dare: Dumping cold water on herself in a coffee shop. Taped and uploaded to the NERVE site by her friend Tommy, the subsequent wet-T-shirt effect garners enough online attention that she is selected for a set of escalating dares that take her to the grand finals. With each dare, a commensurate prize inferred from her ThisIsMe profile is dangled in front of her. Between momentum and cupidity, she finds herself partnered with Ian, "a smokin'-hot guy who's eyeing me like candy," in a secret room in a Seattle nightclub along with five other players, who must simultaneously cooperate and compete in ever-more humiliating and dangerous stunts to win extravagant, personalized grand prizes. The commentary on today's life-as-public-spectacle society is both unsubtle and sound; the plot's nearer-future similarities to The Hunger Games are equally inescapable. If characterization and theme are obvious, the pacing is nevertheless relentless, and readers will find themselves flipping madly to the very last page. (Thriller. 14-18)

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November 1, 2012

Gr 9 Up-Vee has spent her teen years content to live behind the scenes until it appears that her best friend is making a move on her crush. Angry and hurt, she decides to show her classmates that there is more to her than they think. She competes in the online truth-or-dare game of NERVE, in which contestants are offered increasingly tempting prizes to take ever-more-difficult dares. The people who run the game personalize each new round and successfully up the ante by accessing contestants' online This Is Me pages (think Facebook on steroids) and by keeping track of the online chatter as teens watch their friends compete. The dares, at first merely socially embarrassing, quickly escalate into dangerous and cruel pranks. Vee convinces herself that she can get out at any time, but she has been paired with handsome Ian, who always manages to talk her into going another round. When they are chosen to compete in the final round, the prizes, heretofore material goods, become life-changing opportunities that Vee and her partner can't pass up. They find themselves pitted against five other players in a high-stakes game. If any one of them forfeits, all will lose their prizes, and some of the finalists will stop at nothing to prevent that from happening. Ryan questions the nature of entertainment and explores the concept of privacy in a world of increasingly sophisticated social media. Teens will find themselves drawn in by the story's possibilities, and unNERVEd by its outcome. Give this to Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games fans (Scholastic, 2008).Cary Frostick, Mary Riley Styles Public Library, Falls Church, VA

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2012
Grades 9-12 After deciding to challenge herself to move beyond her usual behind-the-scenes comfort zone, Vee gets involved in a reality-style online game, NERVE, which requires players to take on increasingly bizarre and personality-distorting dares. The audience, termed Watchers, votes and comments via text messages, and Vee becomes a sensationand finds herself being stalked. Ryan has created a credible game, as well as a realistic character and narrator in Vee. She is less successful in weaving together credible plot threads. Vee seems to crush on every guy she meets, from normal classmate Matthew to NERVE partner Ian and even brilliant but recently dismissible Tommy, and while these four receive essential character development, Vee's girlfriends remain mostly ciphers. Still, readers will likely remain tightly keyed into questions about what is going to happen to Vee herself, who is reminiscent of Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl, translated into an American high-school girl.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)