In one scene teens drink alcohol from a flask and spoke pot. Video footage shows a boy using steroids. Eli describes witnessing a classmate light himself on fire and die by suicide. Some kissing between boy and girl.Ī boy hits Eli and slams him around in a bathroom. He makes some insulting comments about her previous life. Eli’s dad’s girlfriend is a former stripper. Eli watches a video of a classmate doing a striptease down to her underwear. Some slurs used by kids bullying another kid.Įli overhears a conversation about a girl taking a pregnancy test. Eli has a crush on a Latino girl named Isabel. I think fans of Leopoldo Gout’s The Game series will enjoy this book. While this probably wasn’t my favorite book this year-it’s a bit of an out-of-the-box pick for me-I did enjoy reading it. But I definitely liked that he has this shifting view of life online because of what he experiences through his relationships with Mouse and Seth in particular. I don’t want to give away too much of the plot. He learns that there are some definite flaws in his ideals when he faces unexpected consequences. Eli had some really strong feelings about online freedom and the idea that people who don’t take precautions to seriously protect their data can’t be upset if someone accesses it.

At first I worried about the position the book would take.

I thought the topic of coding and of bullying online made for a really fascinating, intense read. I liked the way his relationship with Misty, his father’s girlfriend, changes over the course of the book. That said, he grows a LOT as a character through the story, and by the end, I felt like I had a much stronger connection with him. I didn’t like the kind of know-it-all attitude and his insensitivity to the people around him. I liked Isabel and Zack a lot, but Eli was a tougher sell for me.

This timely story from the author of Butter is a thrilling tale about the power of the internet, the young people who wield it, and the fine lines between bully and victim, justice and vengeance.Ĭhaos of Now took some directions I wasn’t expecting, and I really appreciated that about the story. Suddenly Eli finds himself in way over his head as his keystrokes start to have devastating consequences in the real world. But Eli’s hacking skills get him roped into a vigilante website that-while subverting the school’s cybersnoops- seeks justice for Jordan and everyone else being bullied. Eli just wants to graduate-so he can get out of town, get away from his father’s embarrassingly young fiancée, and get himself a prestigious coding job. Schools now have access to students’ online activities and students have less privacy than ever. Life at Eli’s high school hasn’t been the same since his classmate Jordan died by suicide after being tirelessly bullied. Published on OctoAmazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Erin lange books