Nerve

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