YA Science Fiction Review: The Hive by Barry Lyga, Morgan Baden, Jennifer Beals, and Tom Jacobsen

Book info:

Title:  The Hive
Author:  Barry Lyga, Morgan Baden, Jennifer Beals, and Tom Jacobsen
Genre:  YA science fiction
Release Date:  September 3rd, 2019
Publisher:  KCP Loft
Source:  Finished copy received from publisher which did not influence my opinion
My rating:  5 stars

Synopsis:
Cassie McKinney has always believed in the Hive.

Social media used to be out of control, after all. People were torn apart by trolls and doxxers. Even hackers - like Cassie's dad - were powerless against it.

But then the Hive came. A better way to sanction people for what they do online. Cause trouble, get too many "condemns," and a crowd can come after you, teach you a lesson in real life. It's safer, fairer and perfectly legal.

Entering her senior year of high school, filled with grief over an unexpected loss, Cassie is primed to lash out. Egged on by new friends, she makes an edgy joke online. Cassie doubts anyone will notice.

But the Hive notices everything. And as her viral comment whips an entire country into a frenzy, the Hive demands retribution.

One moment Cassie is anonymous; the next, she's infamous. And running for her life.

With nowhere to turn, she must learn to rely on herself - and a group of Hive outcasts who may not be reliable - as she slowly uncovers the truth about the machine behind the Hive.

New York Times bestselling authors Barry Lyga and Morgan Baden have teamed up for the first time to create a novel that's gripping, terrifying and more relevant every day, based on a story proposal by Jennifer Beals and Tom Jacobson.


My Review:
This book was so good.  So much of it relates to what is going on today, our President, our social media issues, society, mob mentality, all of it.  It was really scary and had me gasping even at certain parts.  It definitely reminded me of one episode of the show Black Mirror that starred Bryce Dallas Howard, where everyone rated everyone else when they saw them, and how you could take away the little perks and even just ease of every day life by down-voting people.  I've also been told there is another episode of the same show where someone is able to control mechanical bees to kill people that have done something on social media.  I will have to watch that one.  But anyway, the main character Cassie lost her father and had to move to a new school where she doesn't really want to fit in.  Her father was a well-known/infamous hacker and her mother is a professor of classics.  She doesn't get along with her mother, but misses her father a lot.  She finally tries to fit in with a group of girls who are kind of the top of the popular kids.  The girls goad her into posting something about the President's grandchild and her tasteless joke backfires in that everyone gets up in arms and all of a sudden she is the one the Hive is after and she runs.  We get a lot of the hacker group story in this, which is very interesting, although maybe a little high-techy at times.  There's definitely a lot of adventure and suspense and back doors and twists and turns.  There are things that the President in the book does or says that totally are like you'd think our actual current President in real life would do.

My only complaint was with the third person type of narration, it was somewhat omniscient in that we got both Cassie and her mother Rachel's thoughts and actions, and sometimes it was confusing because it was within the same page without any separation to tell us we'd changed points of view.  Other than that this was such a real book to how things are and how easy it is for people to go so intense over the smallest thing, such as what a person has said. 
 

Book Blitz with Giveaway: Social Media by JA Huss

Book info:
Title:  Social Media
Author:  JA Huss
Publication date: August 15th, 2017
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance

Synopsis:

When Grace @FilthyBlueBird tweeted her dirtiest, most delicious secret desires to MovieStar @VaughnAsher she never expected a reply, let alone a face-to-face meeting and an offer of a lifetime.

And when MovieStar @VaughnAsher figured out the woman vacationing at his family’s St. Thomas resort was the author of all those dirty hashtags she was relentlessly tweeting at him… well, that was a challenge he couldn’t pass up. He was more than happy to #RockHerFilthyWorld.
@FilthyBlueBird’s online fantasy is about to collide with her real-life reality. And it’s about to happen now.

What started out as a fun, filthy tweet turned into the romance of a lifetime. If—that is—your idea of romance is the #asshole real-life persona of a kinky off-screen control freak.

Goodreads / Amazon / Barnes and Noble / iBooks / Kobo

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EXCERPT:

GRACE @FilthyBlueBird
I can’t stand silence, it drives me crazy. So I’m a talker. I’m a gabber. I’m what they call… social. I pin things, I share things, I plus things. I like, I follow, and I comment.
But most of all… I tweet. I’m a tweeter. I live for the Twitter. I chirp good morning like a little blue bird from my bed in the AM and then chirp good evening again every night.
Even before social media took over the world I was this girl. From my very first year I have been one of those butterflies. Yes—I’m putting my hand up to stop the protests—my very first year. Because my first birthday picture was of me whispering a secret into my big brother’s ear.
And after social media took over the world I embraced this girl. My bestie, Bebe, and I have this whole social thing down to a science. We are the champions of chatter, the proponents of prattle, the backers of blather. We are the goddesses of gossip and we own this shit. We take bubbly optimism to a whole new virtual level. Our motto is Happiness is a #Hashtag and we live life knowing the fairy tale is possible, even if you only get it online.
Who needs reality anyway? Reality is being orphaned at thirteen. Reality is foster homes and loneliness. Reality is a risk ripe for disappointment.
But thank God for Bebe and her family. They welcomed me in with open arms and instead of something tragic, I became the poster child for surviving and came out the other end not only intact, but better than ever.
But back to my mouth—and by extension, my fingertips since they do all my talking on Twitter—it has a mind of its own.
And that mind is very dirty.
Yes, my name is Grace Kinsella and I’m a filthy tweeter.
I can turn a hundred and forty characters into living sex. I can string words together in a way that will make you wet your panties with lust. I can make a man blush before he even gets to the hashtag. I am famous for pithy filth.
In fact, my girlfriends and I have an online Facebook group called the Filthy Blue Birds. And we’re not the only ones. The world of pithy filth is booming, friends. There are endless groups like ours. There are legions of shy girls who come alive when faced with the hundred-and-forty-character challenge. And there is a very special place online where we meet, challenging each other to achieve a new level of smexy typing.
I call that Twitter list Dirty Heaven. I made it up, like literally I’m the freaking founder. So Dirty Heaven is my kingdom and I’m the queen.
I’ll stop here to take a bow.
Besides being a list, Dirty Heaven is an online competition that happens on Twitter every Saturday night across the world—yes, we have filthy tweeters from all walks of life. At 8 PM Eastern the FT’s come alive and each league puts up their best and brightest. You get one tweet, one hashtag, and one chance to shine.
I don’t win anymore, it’s simply not fair. I’m now the judge. But back when we were first putting this together my tweets took me to Dirty Heaven time after time after time. That’s back when we used to have the competitions nightly and the group was small. Just fifteen or twenty of my closest online stranger friends. Each competition we had an online muse and we took turns choosing who would benefit from our blush-inducing prose. Sometimes the girls picked models or rock stars.
I only ever had one muse and his name is Vaughn Asher.
Yes, the Vaughn Asher. A Hollywood legend. He started out in the boy band 2 Far Out, then when his angelic voice changed as he hit puberty he graduated into Disney sitcoms. Most child actors would fade after that, never able to make the transition. But Vaughn Asher doubled down on the workouts—gaining the title of Most Envied Body in Hollywood six years in a row from Buzz Hollywood Magazine—and the preteen wannabe turned into an action-hero heartthrob overnight.
Just thinking his name makes me sigh. He’s so freaking gorgeous. That messy dark hair that makes him look like he just rolled out of bed. Those tight abs that just make you want to drag your tongue all over them to see if they taste as good as they look. And that package, boy. He’s never done any nudes so I have to use my imagination, but my imagination is vivid. I have a very clear picture.
Besides, you know what they say about a man’s thumbs, right? Well, Vaughn Asher has incredible thumbs. And large feet. They say that too.
Yes, doing filthy things to his six-foot-two frame has been my idea of Dirty Heaven for almost three years now. I’d like to say I’ve said everything imaginable about him, but that’s not true. I never run out of ideas. It’s like my brain only exists to compose a one-hundred-and-forty-character sentence that will turn him red.
That’s my fantasy. That’s my fairy tale. Vaughn Asher doing things to me that can only be said in a hashtag.

Author Bio:

JA Huss is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than fifty books. She likes stories about family, loyalty, and extraordinary characters who struggle with basic human emotions while dealing with bigger than life problems. JA loves writing heroes who make you swoon, heroines who makes you jealous, and the perfect Happily Ever After ending.

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Two YA ARC Mini-Reviews: It Started With Goodbye by Christina June and Antisocial by Jillian Blake

As I've mentioned many, many, many times, I am behind on reviews. But one of my goals this summer is to get caught up on that.  Fingers crossed.  So today, I'm sharing two mini-reviews of some ARCs that I was sent by publishers.  I want to keep my contacts with those publishers on good terms, so I'm making sure now, with the reading planner I'm now using along with my blog planner, to get stuff read. These two books unfortunately didn't make it on to the calendar in time, so these reviews are a week or two later than I would have liked.  Anyway, enjoy my short reviews, along with the summaries from Goodreads.

Title:  Antisocial
Author:  Jillian Blake
Genre:  YA contemporary
Publisher:  Delacorte Press
Release Date:  May 16th, 2017
My rating:  5 stars


Now, I'm so mad at myself that I did not get my post up by the 12th like I had promised the publisher.  If I had picked it up  even on the 10th, I can tell you I would have been done in time to post a review, because this was a really quick read.  But it wasn't just a quick read, it was a really good, extremely hard to put down read.  The characters were all so good, ones that you wanted to know what would happen to, that you definitely empathized with, and in many ways, I related to them.  There were some really fun Game of Thrones references.  I like how as you learned more and thought maybe you knew exactly who might be behind all of the leaks and stuff, it was spelled out how they actually couldn't be the ones behind it.  The way it all ended up made so much sense, and really was pretty realistic in my point of view.  I mentioned in my short review on Goodreads after I finished that it reminded me of YA books I read as a teen.  What I kind of meant by that is that while the voice of the main character is definitely somewhat realistic, there is still a hint of an adult-like quality to the voice.  I'm not sure exactly how to explain it better.  Sorry. But I loved it, read it in almost one sitting.  It's a good look at just how much we often share with virtual strangers.  Something I know that I am definitely guilty of.  This is a book that I highly recommend, partly for that reason as well, and I will definitely be adding it to the school library where I work!


Here is the blurb from Goodreads:


Alexandria Prep is hacked in this whodunit set in the age of social media and the cloud.

Senior spring at Alexandria Prep was supposed to be for sleeping through class and partying with friends. But for Anna Soler, it’s going to be a lonely road. She’s just been dumped by her gorgeous basketball star boyfriend—with no explanation. Anna’s closest friends, the real ones she abandoned while dating him, are ignoring her. The endearing boy she’s always had a complicated friendship with is almost too sympathetic.

But suddenly Anna isn’t the only one whose life has been upended. Someone is determined to knock the kings and queens of the school off their thrones: one by one, their phones get hacked and their personal messages and photos are leaked. At first it’s funny—people love watching the dirty private lives of those they envy become all too public. 

Then the hacks escalate. Dark secrets are exposed, and lives are shattered. Chaos erupts at school. As Anna tries to save those she cares about most and to protect her own secrets, she begins to understand the reality of our always-connected lives: 

Sometimes we share too much.  

Title:  It Started With Goodbye   
Author:  Christina June  
Genre:  YA  Contemporary
Publisher:  Blink YA Books
Release Date:  May 9th, 2017
My rating:  4 stars

This is another book that was sooooo quick to read!  I read over half of it in one sitting as well.  It's billed as a contemporary take on Cinderella, and that definitely comes through.  However, in this story, the "wicked" stepmother has more depth, and actually is someone maybe not so wicked.  The father is not dead, just away for the summer.  What I loved about this story is how much the characters seemed realistic and very up to date.  The main character is an artist, but a graphic designer, wanting to do web sites and make her way through that artistic field.  I like that while the "wicked" stepmother in this story is maybe not the usual villain, the bad guy, who got Tatum and her best friend in trouble in the first place, is really a bad guy.  And I like how all of it works out.  As I mention all the time, I don't always read a lot of YA contemporary, it is very rarely a genre that I choose on my own, I am not disappointed at all that I read this one.   Definitely a book I'll want to purchase for my school library where I work.

Here is the blurb from Goodreads:

Sixteen-year-old Tatum Elsea is bracing for the worst summer of her life. After being falsely accused of a crime, she’s stuck under stepmother-imposed house arrest and her BFF’s gone ghost. Tatum fills her newfound free time with community service by day and working at her covert graphic design business at night (which includes trading emails with a cute cello-playing client). When Tatum discovers she’s not the only one in the house keeping secrets, she finds she has the chance to make amends with her family and friends. Equipped with a new perspective, and assisted by her feisty step-abuela-slash-fairy-godmother, Tatum is ready to start fresh and maybe even get her happy ending along the way. 

Narc by Crissa-Jean Chappell

I really enjoyed the book Total Constant Order by this author, in fact I made it a staff recommendation at the bookstore where I work too.  So I was so excited when I got to meet her at BEA this summer.  And I also got an advanced readers copy of her latest book, Narc, autographed of course!
Now, unfortunately, I didn't enjoy this one quite as much as the first one, but it was still overall a pretty good book.  I know exactly which students I would recommend this to, and I could actually see it as a possible nomination for our state reader award lists, based on books in the same thread that have been on the lists before.
Narc is a story about exactly what you think, a boy who becomes a Narc in his school.  It all begins when he makes a mistake, he is driving with his sister, and runs a red light.  The cop who pulls him over finds drugs in the car.  Aaron knows they are his, but his sister must have found them in his room and taken them, so the cops find them on her.  They give him a deal to keep both himself and his sister out of jail or juvie, he can go back to school and help them discover who is actually supplying the drugs.  Aaron was always kind of a loner, one might call him a bit of a loser.  But now he comes back, and must figure a way in with the kids that might have the answer to this question.  He starts with a couple girls.  Ones he knows have the big parties, and even seem like they do drugs.  But one, the one he really likes, Morgan, also has a jerk ex-boyfriend, who kind of senses something is off about Aaron.  Aaron's home life isn't great either.  His father died taking pictures of the war.  His mom has been working a ton, and kind of become a bit of an absentee mom.  He knows his sister is up to something, she's too young for a boyfriend, but is out visiting one, someone they don't know.
Some issues I had with the book.  It was a bit confusing in how he was dealing with the situation.  The way he went about getting in with the other kids.  I didn't like the way the police were, I know, it is supposed to be from a teenager's point of view, a teenager being coerced into doing this against his will.  I just don't feel like the cops really worked in the story for what I would think they would actually do.  I did like the use of the Facebook stuff, social media is such a big deal these days with bullying and similar things.  But the way it was put forth in the book was almost barely there, kind of confusing for me.  I feel it could have been fleshed out a bit more.  Although I did really like the way he got some clues about who was doing the online sabotage, based on things he saw.  I won't say what exactly, don't want to spoil that "a-ha!" moment in the book.
One thing I personally LOVED, was all the references to the Marx Brothers. I am such a huge fan of them, in fact was back when I was younger, and even in the 80's, most people my age didn't know who the Marx Brothers were.  Just as it is for Aaron in this book. I love that it was a family thing for him, as it was for me with my grandpa.

Crissa-Jean Chappell

All in all a good book for what it was supposed to be about.  I did really like the ending, both the climax when it all went down, and the "afterward" part.