Girl Gone Viral by Arvin Ahmadi

Young Adult. Sci-Fi. Near Future. Technology. Boarding School. 

Rating: 4/5

Started: 28 October

Finished: 30 October

Summary: 

    Opal Hopper is a student PAAST, a prestigious boarding tech high school. She is an avid user of the WAVE, an online virtual reality social media platform. And she is determined to win a contest on the WAVE so that she can meet Howie Mendelsohn, head of one of the biggest tech companies in the world. But she also has a secret. Her real name is Opal Tal, and her father used to be Howie Mendelsohn's business partner ... before he disappeared. Opal wants to meet Howie so that she can finally, finally, figure out what happened to her dad. 

    Using a strategy of exposing truths on the WAVE, Opal rises to fame, but in a society dictated by machines and virtual reality, it can be hard to decide what to believe. 

Thoughts:

    This was a pretty good book. It got me out of a reading slump, which is always appreciated. I wanted a boarding-school read, and while this didn't totally hit that mark, I am still glad I read it. I'm pretty sure the MC was on the ace spectrum, which was cool, and I liked how capable she was. There were more stupid choices and moments of inner ick than I wanted, but it wasn't too bad. The whole book was frighteningly timely — all the stuff with anti-tech factions and lying on the internet was scary — but I think I will try to read other books by Arvin Ahmadi, hopefully soon.