Nerve
After deciding to challenge herself to move beyond her usual behind-the-scenes comfort zone, Vee gets involved in a reality-style online game, NERVE, which requires players to take on increasingly bizarre and personality-distorting dares. The audience, termed Watchers, votes and comments via text messages, and Vee becomes a sensation—and finds herself being stalked. Ryan has created a credible game, as well as a realistic character and narrator in Vee. She is less successful in weaving together credible plot threads. Vee seems to crush on every guy she meets, from “normal” classmate Matthew to NERVE partner Ian and even brilliant but recently dismissible Tommy, and while these four receive essential character development, Vee’s girlfriends remain mostly ciphers. Still, readers will likely remain tightly keyed into questions about what is going to happen to Vee herself, who is reminiscent of Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl, translated into an American high-school girl. Grades 9-12. --Francisca Goldsmith