Title: Girl Gone Viral
Author: Arvin Ahmadi
Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers
Edition: Hardback
Pages: 384 pages
Buy Links: Amazon / Barnes and Noble / Book Depository
Before anything else, I just wanna say a massive thank you to kuya JM of TheBookFreakRevelation for allowing me to join this International blog tour and to Penguin Random House International for gracing us this wonderful opportunity.
For seventeen-year-old Opal Hopper, code is magic. She builds entire worlds from scratch: Mars craters, shimmering lakes, any virtual experience her heart desires.
But she can’t code her dad back into her life. When he disappeared after her tenth birthday, leaving only a cryptic note, Opal tried desperately to find him. And when he never turned up, she enrolled at a boarding school for technical prodigies and tried to forget.
Until now. Because WAVE, the world’s biggest virtual reality platform, has announced a contest where the winner gets to meet its billionaire founder. The same billionaire who worked closely with Opal’s dad. The one she always believed might know where he went. The one who maybe even murdered him.
What begins as a small data hack to win the contest spirals out of control when Opal goes viral, digging her deeper into a hole of lies, hacks, and manipulation. How far will Opal go for the answers–or is it the attention–she’s wanted for years?
For the past months, years and decades. Technology already had a large impact in our lives. That we can’t even do simple things without using them in our daily routines. With this fast growing technology, do we really know the pros and cons in using them? Do it really help us or do it just simply dragging us to be dependent on it? Do we know what are the risks in using them? Do we really just giving others the opportunity to know private things about us?
I know you are wondering why I’m asking this simple but intriguing questions. If you ought to find out I suggest that you should continue reading.
Girl Gone Viral is the second book by the one and only Arvin Ahmadi. Some of you probably don’t know or know him. But he is only the author behind the beautiful book Down and Across.
Just like in his first novel, he still enables us to grasp another gorgeous story that will surely hook us. In this novel, it captures the beauty and some of the ugly part of technology. The meaning of family, friendship, and how different the school works for us.
As for me who doesn’t know a little bit of virtual gaming, it is kinda hard for me to understand some things on how it works. But with the author kind of writing style, it enables me to understand and learn what it really is it. And that folks is one thing that I like about Arvin. He let us not just to enjoy the pleasure of reading a story but let us learn new and understand things we don’t know.
With regards of choosing the character. I love how instead of he using a male protagonist he use a female one. We all know that when we talk about virtual gaming and in terms of using gadgets, it quickly comes in our mind that it will be a male one rather than a female.
As I said awhile ago, do we really know the deeper meaning of technology to us. What it gives us? I’am saying this and sharing this kind of things because there are some parts in the story where you will find that little did we know that other already know our private lives through hacking without us knowing it. That the hackers can simply sell this information to others and use it against us. I would really recommend that everyone should read Girl Gone Viral to enable us to use the internet with out most care and not giving your information on the net because you just found it amusing and because others are doing it.
All I can is that Girl Gone Viral is a book that will surely enable us to enjoy reading a good story and teaching us things at the same time.
MY RATING:
4 OUT OF 5 STARS
Great review! I’ll have to add this to my ‘books to buy’ list!
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