Lucy’s learned some important lessons from tabloid darling Jayla Heart’s all-too-public blunders: Avoid the spotlight, don’t feed the Internet trolls, and keep your secrets secret. The policy has served Lucy well all through high school, so when her best friend Ellie gets sick before prom and begs her to step in as Cole’s date, she accepts with a smile, silencing about ten different reservations. Like the one where she’d rather stay home shredding online zombies. And the one where she hates playing dress-up. And especially the one where she’s been secretly in love with Cole since the dawn of time.
When Cole surprises her at the after party with a kiss under the stars, it’s everything Lucy has ever dreamed of… and the biggest BFF deal-breaker ever. Despite Cole’s lingering sweetness, Lucy knows they’ll have to ’fess up to Ellie. But before they get the chance, Lucy’s own Facebook profile mysteriously explodes with compromising pics of her and Cole, along with tons of other students’ party indiscretions. Tagged. Liked. And furiously viral.
By Monday morning, Lucy’s been branded a slut, a backstabber, and a narc, mired in a tabloid-worthy scandal just weeks before graduation.
Lucy’s been battling undead masses online long enough to know there’s only one way to survive a disaster of this magnitude: Stand up and fight. Game plan? Uncover and expose the Facebook hacker, win back her best friend’s trust, and graduate with a clean slate.
There’s just one snag—Cole. Turns out Lucy’s not the only one who’s been harboring unrequited love…
At the root of society in the current day and age lies the Internet. Sad (to some), but very, very true, and #scandal shows just what happens when someone takes advantage of the inter-world and things go way wrong. This book will leave you asking just how far is too far? Online bullying, romance, friendship, and a social network centered mystery that’ll leave you wondering to the last page all make up #scandal.
Character-wise, the super anti-tech (e)VIL group was the highlight of this novel. Every time a member would show I’d find myself laughing at just about anything they said. There’s tons of social network humor going on there and they really do put some things into perspective for people who are addicted to all these fancy online media outlets.
Miss Demeanor’s occasional letters throughout the book were insightful and really helpful in regards to figuring out who was in charge of releasing those photos of Lucy and Cole, and I loved all the bubbly snark that came with it. Very XOXO Gossip Girl but still pretty awesome. It was quite a shocker who this actually ended up being and, forgive me, sort of hilarious, but I’m partially evil so ignore my insanity. Also, for all you lovely people who haven’t read the book: there’s a character and he’s referred to as 420 and he will be everything once you do. Every. Thing. He also divides girls into categories based on chips and you’re very well going to want to be a Doritos girl, but that’s not important just yet.
I was so thrown off by just who had leaked the pictures of Lucy, and I didn’t really feel like there were any hints given to readers so the entire novel I was sort of scrambling around, but it wasn’t exactly a bad thing because it was fun looking for clues that didn’t exactly exist. Does that make sense? Upon finding out just who did the dirty deed, I was shocked yet again, but in a pretty great way. Betrayal is always the best in books. Buahaha.
Also, there is mention of Oasis once or twice in #scandal and I’m not exactly sure if that should be a crime or something of the sort? However, since “Wonderwall” wasn’t the song in question, I won’t hold it against anyone because being completely honest, we all have at least one Oasis song on our iPhone, and if you won’t admit to it then you’re just a bad liar.
I wish there would have been a bit more time for romance between Lucy and Cole in the novel, but considering the circumstances I can see why that sort of thing was put off for the time being. They were still super adorable and I liked how things turned out.
Online bullying, romance, friendship, betrayal, and a social network centered mystery all make up the insightfully humorous #scandal.
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Rating: 8/10
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