Summary:
Senior spring at Alexandria Prep was supposed to be for sleeping through class and partying with friends. But for Anna Soler, it’s going to be a lonely road. She’s just been dumped by her gorgeous basketball star boyfriend—with no explanation. Anna’s closest friends, the real ones she abandoned while dating him, are ignoring her. The endearing boy she’s always had a complicated friendship with is almost too sympathetic.
But suddenly Anna isn’t the only one whose life has been upended. Someone is determined to knock the kings and queens of the school off their thrones: one by one, their phones get hacked and their personal messages and photos are leaked. At first it’s funny—people love watching the dirty private lives of those they envy become all too public.
Then the hacks escalate. Dark secrets are exposed, and lives are shattered. Chaos erupts at school. As Anna tries to save those she cares about most and to protect her own secrets, she begins to understand the reality of our always-connected lives:
Sometimes we share too much.
Review:
I really liked this book, and it was such a quick read, I blew through it in less than a day. Antisocial was described as Pretty Little Liars meets WikiLeaks, which piqued my interest and had me putting this book at the top of my TBR pile (which is rather large). And once I got into this book, I wasn’t disappointed.
The main character, Anna, has some serious social anxieties. So when she returns to school after being broken up with by the coolest guy in school, she has some trouble readjusting, especially because she dropped all of her friends to start dating Palmer. Lucky for Anna, one of her best friends is there to save the day, even if the rest of her friends aren’t so ready to forgive her so quickly for leaving them in the dust.
Once the hacking/data-leak element of this book kicked in, I was hooked. I had to know who was behind the hacks and what their motives were. Were they ever going to be discovered, or were they going to get away without punishment for the chaos and pain and hurt and trouble that they caused amongst the students? I had to know.
I think that this book did a really good job of keeping me wondering just what was going to happen, and I never really felt like it was being predictable, which is one of my biggest pet peeves. However, I feel like the ending didn’t provide me with enough closure, and I was left wanting just a little bit more, despite all that we got in the end. All in all though, this was a great read.
Antisocial‘s message is so important in this day and age where every aspect of our lives is held somewhere online. The face that we present to the world online is hardly ever how we really are in person, and as such, there is a divide between who we want people to believe we are, and who we actually are. This book points out both the bad and the good that come with such an online presence, and made me think a lot about what I share online. Not in the “what if a future employer sees this?” kind of way, but in the “Does this represent who I really am?” kind of way. I give Antisocial 4.5/5 stars.