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Summary
Summary
"Smart, timely and riveting."-- The New York Times Book Review
Perfect for fans of Warcross and Black Mirror , Girl Gone Viral is the inventive and timely story of a seventeen-year-old coder's catapult to stardom.
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?
Author Notes
Arvin Ahmadi grew up outside Washington, DC. He graduated from Columbia University and has worked in the tech industry. When he's not reading or writing books, he can be found watching late-night talk show interviews and editing Wikipedia pages. Down and Across is his first novel, followed by Girl Gone Viral .
Reviews (6)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 7 Up--Opal Hopper wasn't always Opal Hopper. When she was ten, her father, famed entrepreneur Abba Tal, went missing, leaving behind an ambiguous note. After failing to get answers, Opal changed her name and enrolled at a prestigious boarding school for technical prodigies. Then Howie Mendelsohn, founder of the virtual reality platform WAVE, and her father's old partner, announces a contest where the winner gets to meet him in person. The contest reignites Opal's need for answers, even if it means ruining friendships, engaging in political debates, and reclaiming her name. Jorjeana Marie's inquisitive tone captures Opal's sometimes indecisive and uncertain, occasionally egotistical voice. Listeners will feel Opal's struggle with relentless media inquiries, high school romances, college planning, and family dynamics. Character development is a bit strained, and the abrupt ending leaves room for a sequel. VERDICT Recommended for collections needing more dystopian fiction or where there are a lot of Ready Player One fans.--Amanda Schiavulli, Liverpool Public Library, NY
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this near-future thriller, Ahmadi (Down and Across) questions the benefits of technology and its role in creating instant celebrity, shortening attention spans, and insidiously impacting democracy. When 17-year-old coder Opal Tal's father, Aaron, went missing seven years earlier, she attempted to track him down by reaching out to his business partner, Howie Mendelsohn. But Opal's requests were ignored. Now legally known as Opal Hopper and a senior at Palo Alto Academy of Science and Technology, she is given an opportunity to meet Howie by entering the Make-a-Splash competition on WAVE, a virtual reality social media site that Howie created. All Opal has to do is give up her privacy and become a viral media sensation, which she and her friends do using ill-gotten information about how people react to an infamous personality's very public emotional breakdowns. The narrative blends with texts, transcripts, and other technologies, sometimes affecting pacing, but Ahmadi's relatable characters keep the story engaging. Ages 12-up. Agent: Tina Wexler, ICM Partners. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
High school coding genius Opal Hopper is looking to promote the hottest social media star in virtual reality in order to win a contest that will allow her to meet the last man to see her father alive. Thrust into the spotlight after a computer hack gives her access into the minds of the virtual reality platform's users, Opal must stretch the truth to get what she wants, even as more lies are exposed. Artfully portraying the tension that results from Opal's difficulties in drawing a line between virtual reality and the physical world, Marie easily transitions between voices both human and AI. Eboni Njoku November/December 2019 p.123(c) Copyright 2019. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
On a quest to find her missing father, a teen and her friends create a virtual reality experience that goes viral.Seventeen-year-old Opal Hopper has a talent for coding, an entertainer's instincts, and an entrepreneur's drive for disruption. She's also haunted by an old mystery: Why did her father disappear, and what is his old partner, Howie Mendelsohn, keeping secret? When Howie's firm, Palo Alto Labs, launches a contest on their VR platform, offering the winner a chance to meet with Howie himself, Opal leaps at the chance to get some answerseven if it means stealing private data. But every strategic step that this smart, complex heroine takes toward fame, fortune, and closure lands her on shakier moral ground and stretches her loyalties. The absorbing narrative takes readers to a near future where smart-voice assistants, self-driving Teslas, the Hyperloop, and delivery drones are du jour. But men still run the big tech companies, female entrepreneurs still struggle with harassment and inequity, and anti-technology movements are on the rise. Despite the unsatisfying ending, Opal's journey raises good questions: Can we be better than our internet selves? What if we allowed computers to track our most private thoughts and feelings? Could robots and humans live in harmony? The answers, of course, are still under development. Opal is assumed white and her best friend is Nigerian.An immersive ride through the near future with a compelling heroine at the helm. (Science fiction. 12-17) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Ahmadi's sophomore novel, following Down and Across (2018), is a thrilling, out-of-this-world experience for any reader. Coding is 17-year-old Opal Hopper's life. For a young woman who can create anything she can dream, it's heartbreakingly frustrating that she cannot conjure up her missing father or even find a glimmer of a trail to locate him. Her hope of one day finding him is renewed with the announcement of a virtual reality contest. The award includes a meeting with the billionaire developer her father once worked for. Opal is determined to win the contest at any cost even if it means hacking, cheating, lying, and unearthing murder. Ahmadi delivers a breathless, sweeping story without shying away from heavy themes like grief, morality, and mental health. Opal is a girl who enjoys all the benefits of being labeled a prodigy, but she quickly comes to realize how easy it is to become tangled in the web of attention and fame. Like all great sf stories, this leaves readers with some weighty questions to ponder at the close of the book, and how much of our privacy we're willing to sacrifice for personalized web content is one of them. This thought-provoking question, particularly in a moment when we are starting to grapple with this exact issue, will make this even more relevant to teens.--Enishia Davenport Copyright 2019 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Stories set in the Bay Area grapple with technology and racial injustice. But love still has its say summer of love, we hardly knew you. The characters in three Y.A. novels set in a contemporary or near-future Bay Area are notably affected by the overwhelming influence of Silicon Valley and venture capital. And yet it's love - romantic, familial or between friends - that drives the beating heart of these addictive and timely stories. It isn't free. (Was it ever?) Instead, love comes more rightfully dressed in all-important questions about power: how it's established, who grants it, whether everyone has equal access to it. Most important, these books show why love is absolutely vital to fight for, hold onto and celebrate. IN MISA SUGIURA'S THIS TIME WILL BE DIFFERENT (HarperTeen, 400 pp., $17.99; ages 13 and up), CJ Katsuyama spends most of her after-school hours working at her family's flower shop, Heart's Desire. While that seems like the perfect place for a romance, looming bankruptcy also sets the stage for a dynamic, multilayered drama about family love, the depth and strength of friendship, and hetero and queer romance. Sugiura, the author of "It's Not Like It's a Secret," also unpacks history's repercussions on the present, as CJ and a group of friends recognize how profoundly the internment camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II established the economic imbalances that still affect their community today, and how some white families promoted racist programs in order to amass their own wealth. For CJ, romance, family history and community history come together, forming a story that is ultimately about dignity and self-worth. The novel's structure complements its themes: There is the forwardmoving action of romance, suspense about the fate of the store, and the possibilities of a budding student revolution, alternating with short bursts of Japanese-American history that CJ embellishes with whipsmart sarcasm: "November 1945. Toshio, Mary and 16-year-old Frank (my granddad) are released from the Heart Mountain internment camp with travel fare and 25 dollars each because the U.S. government is generous like that." This masterly weaving of the personal, political and historical is one of the novel's greatest strengths. A story with so many narrative threads might easily unspool, but Sugiura keeps it tightly interlaced through CJ's captivating, honest, often hilarious point of view. "I'm so sick of the model-minority thing," she says at one point. "It makes kids like me feel extra defective, like I'm disappointing not only Mom but the entire world." Her voice anchors a novel that's fresh, vibrant, affecting and powerful. with this summer marking the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O'Connell's laura DEAN KEEPS BREAKING UP WITH ME (First Second, 289 pp., $17.99; ages 14 and up) IS a Welcome reminder that love is love is love. Set in the richly diverse community in and around Berkeley High School, this graphic novel is a sweet, wholehearted ode to onagain-off-again relationships. Frederica Riley (Freddy) is sure she loves the mesmerizing Laura Dean. What makes her extra hooked is that no matter how many times Laura breaks up with her, Laura always beckons her back with her siren call, "it's cool" (everything's always cool for Laura, maybe too much so). But after Freddy catches Laura cheating on her at the Valentine's Day dance, and yet another breakup ensues, Freddy needs help. Tamaki and Valero-O'Connell slyly undercut the rocky romance, preventing it from veering into melodrama with endearing moments between the girls' other friends and flashes of humor. Freddy's friend Doodle provides a necessary counterbalance to overwhelming and overbearing Laura, and Freddy's family of stuffed animals offer their two cents in comic-relief asides. Much of the well-earned emotional power of the story emerges in beautiful silences. We see the cluttered cave of Freddy's bedroom, or a moment of escape in which she's slumped against a school wall, or long walks to and from coffee shops. But nothing in this city or story feels cold and concrete. Quite the opposite. The lush foliage and plant life bursting from the background, sometimes even overtaking the foreground, suggests that life is growing, even thriving, all around Freddy, and that though the intensity of a relationship can feel all-consuming, affairs of the heart are better served by looking up and seeing what else (and who else) is around you. Friends matter. They are not to be sidelined and taken for granted. Again, history is relevant. Sparks of wisdom from a previous generation of L.G.B.T. activists and leaders flash throughout the story, offering important reminders of the efforts and struggles of previous generations. But the story isn't overtly political. Freddy gets to mope about her on-and-off relationship with Laura Dean, just as countless heterosexual protagonists do. Tamaki and Valero-O'Connell's tenderhearted narrative sings with real, honest emotion that will resonate with anyone trying to figure out love. understanding history is essential - but what about preparing for the future? In GIRL GONE VIRAL (Viking, 402 pp., $17.99; ages 12 and up), Arvin Ahmadi adroitly examines our contemporary obsession with celebrity culture and social media through the voice of Opal Hopper, a 17-year-old in the near future in search of answers about her father's mysterious disappearance. Opal's life at the ultracompetitive Palo Alto High School is relatively quiet until she gains access to an illegal download of data, a drone mysteriously delivers her a special pair of virtual reality glasses, and she finds herself an overnight celebrity after she uses both gifts in her role as host of a VR. talk show. "I want to control the narrative," she decides. Clues to her father's disappearance emerge, her love life takes a surprising swing (until that relationship is stretched to its limit), and the high stakes venture capital investments that come with her success put her in an ethically compromised position. Throughout the compulsively readable story that follows, Ahmadi raises thoughtprovoking questions about the role and influence of social media in our lives. The intoxication of going viral is all too familiar, but even the savviest of us aren't immune to the way virtual reality distorts actual reality. Social media doesn't "capture" real life, it stitches together narrative; it's fiction masquerading as documentary nonfiction. When we live our entire lives on social media, what is "reality" exactly, and what effect does living primarily in a fiction of our own making have on our emotional, psychological and even physical health? Ethically speaking, is the empathy we express in virtual reality only virtual empathy, and therefore not the real thing? And without genuine empathy, who are we? While this smart, timely and riveting novel addresses all of these profound questions, Ahmadi keeps the philosophy tucked neatly between the lines, foregrounding the emotional questions that drive Opal and her friends' story. They wrestle with contradictions between what people say and how they really feel, and they must figure out whether relationships formed in lives lived in V.R., rather than those made authentically I.R.L., can still be honest and true. The answers, of course, come all the way back to the beginning: love. Ahmadi shows that the best investments are the ones we make in each other, because the opportunity to love another person is something each of us can offer and all of us deserve. BRENDAN KIELY is the author of four novels for young readers, most recently "Tradition."