Scripted

February 9, 2015
Nettie has always lived on Bliss Island, where she and other "Characters" are filmed for a reality show that has gone on for generations. She knows that the powerful production company Media1 manipulates her world: the weather is often fake, she must occasionally reshoot scenes, and when Media1 removes Characters with poor ratings, no one is supposed to speak of them again. When Nettie gets a new producer, he bribes her with ways "to provide the Audience with the captivating entertainment it craves," but when his suggestions become mandatory, Nettie must learn to do her own plotting, especially as she starts piecing together what happens when Characters are cut from the show. As a protagonist, Nettie feels underdeveloped (while she says she likes "building gadgets," this detail scarcely figures into the story). But debut author (and former literary agent) Rock has both an unsettling, thought-provoking premise and a way with details, such as the "style motifs" Media1 announces ("The motif for the seventy-third season of Blissful Days is voxless.... Voxless is delicate yet strong"), forcing Characters to change their fashions, furniture, and more. Ages 12-up. Agent: Michelle Andelman, Regal Literary.

November 15, 2014
Not all is blissful on Bliss Island, where a whole community lives in a reality show dystopia decades after a world war.Nettie lives with her mother, knowing she's a Character and on camera most of the time, as is everyone on the island, born into a reality show that has run for a century. Nettie is in serious trouble: Her ratings are down, and she's in danger of being cut, thereby becoming one of the missing Patriots. The armed, collective Authority immediately remove anyone cut and forbid the remaining Characters from ever acknowledging that person's existence. When her friend Belle disappears, however, the girl's brother, Scoop, can't forget. Meanwhile, Nettie's best friend breaks up with Callen, Nettie's next-door neighbor and secret heartthrob, and her producer suggests she can improve her ratings by flirting with Callen. Things go well. However, Media1, the production company that controls not only their lives, but even the weather on the island, begins to demand more. Nettie knows she can't refuse, but she also works with Scoop to discover what happens to the so-called Patriots. Rock effectively contrasts the pretty unreality of the Characters' lives with the looming discovery of their true fates. Issues of privacy and freedom dominate the deceptive glamour as Nettie struggles to make a firm decision about what to do with her own life. An effective, suspenseful dystopia for a wide audience. (Dystopian romance. 12-18)

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December 1, 2014

Gr 7-10- Scripted is a book with an intriguing premise that never quite makes it to prime time. Imagine what life on a reality television show would be like if you were always "on," birth to death, a few generations of people living their lives on Bliss Island for the entertainment of the far less comfortable masses in the Sectors. More than never enjoying privacy is at stake for Nettie because when a Character's ratings drop too far below expectations, she becomes eligible to be "cut." People like her father disappear, and those left behind have only vague ideas of what becoming a Patriot involves when the Reals come to drag them away for breaking the rules of the Contract or for not measuring up. Now that she is 16, Nettie learns that her unimpressive ratings put her at risk, a target for Media1's Initiative-meetings with producers who make suggestions about actions on camera that will provide a jump in popularity for those characters, yielding bonus money and other rewards. Even though Nettie has long had a crush on Callen, he has been dating her uber-popular friend Lia, so she hesitates to take the suggestion to flirt with him even after the couple breaks up. Nettie is torn between her distrust of Media1 and the payoff from going along with the Initiative until character cuts drive her suspicions to confirmation that her controllers have covert and sinister plans. With writing that is somewhat pedestrian and an opening chapter that drops readers into the midst of random high school gossip with no world-building to establish the scenario, there is little to hook or anchor those visiting Bliss; however, those who make it past the pilot may stay engaged for the whole season.-Suzanne Gordon, Lanier High School, Sugar Hill, GA

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2015
Grades 8-11 Never was reality TV quite so realistic. Nettie is a character on a 24/7 daily-life drama called Blissful Days. Media 1, the all-powerful entity that produces the show, controls characters' lives in a harsh, totalitarian grasp. Omnipresent cameras and skittering videographers capture all as folks go about their lives in a show that is never not filming, save when characters can manage to sneak stealthily off-mic. The show is life as Nettie knows it, but when her ratings drop, she is threatened with being cut, which means being exiledbut to where? Rock's scenario is, for sure, an intriguing one. When Nettie gets a suggestion to seduce another character for ratings' sake and then discovers what really happens to cut charactersalong with other details of Media 1's evil strategywell, let the rebellion begin. Despite the heavy load of popular dystopian stories out there, the characters' clever plan to foment revolution should pull readers in, and the provocative premise about media ratings as metaphor will resonate.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)