[I received an electronic review copy of this book from Netgalley and Delacorte Press in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]
Summary
In a dystopian future, the president is running for her fourth term (she had term limits canceled) after Russia destroyed our economy in retaliation for us winning the Sino-Russian War. The president has made it so people can be jailed for calling her names and she controls the media. She markets everything from champagne to steaks to energy drinks with her name and likeness on them. The world is corrupt and everyone knows it.
Theo had the idea first – a cheap, portable lie detector that uses brain imaging to know definitively when people were lying. Sam, Molly, Basquiat, Boob (it’s a long story), and Rebe were the team of teens helping him develop the prototype.
When a man offers the kids $8.5 million for all their research and designs (as well as a non-disclosure agreement), the dollars dace around in Sam’s head for awhile. He’s basically been in this for the money they could make since the beginning. The government has shut down his school and fired their teacher. They also stopped providing bionic upgrades for his mom, a war vet who lost her legs. The only reason they haven’t lost their house is that there’s no one around who could buy it from the bank if they foreclosed. But Sam and the rest are afraid the ones wanting to buy the device could use it for their own dishonest purposes. So they aren’t selling.
When Theo is killed and the buy out offer starts to sound like a threat instead of an opportunity, the kids trace the money back to its source. They discover they are in way over their heads. Powerful people with unlimited resources will do whatever it takes to get the device, even if they have to eliminate a handful of kids.
Review
This was fantastic! The dystopian world is absolutely believable if you watch the news today. The kids are smart (although their characters aren’t developed a whole lot – the focus of this is more on the action of the story) There’s a ton of action as the kids are fighting to stay alive. The people who use lies to get power and money won’t roll over when all of their lies are in jeopardy.
The book exposes the fact that we all have secrets – sins and shame – and some of us lie or hide to protect those things. Others lie in pursuit of wealth or power. The kids in this aren’t squeaky clean either. Some readers have had strong reactions to what they confess (including sex, voyeurism, an eating disorder). The flaws or secrets of the characters are part of why I enjoyed this. It doesn’t shy away from some of the harder pieces – the trauma of war, facing your own shameful choices, confessing them to others, and hopefully learning from them.
The fall out of what happens in the story when the device goes public was far more interesting to me than anything else. If a culture and society goes so far down the path of dishonesty and self-interest and manipulation where no one is held accountable, how can it ever turn back to integrity? This is an important question to me. I expected that the whole story would be about the quest to take the device public and not die. But this was even better than that! The real drama kicked in for me when the device was public and everything fell apart. I’d love to dig into this with some teens and hear their thoughts on this engaging story!