At the Speed of Lies
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Trust no one. Question everything.
Quinn Calvet was supposed to be having an epic year. She had all kinds of plans with her best friend, Ximena, and sister, Ava, and to grow her following as an influencer on The Whine. Instead, Quinn finds herself third wheel to Ximena and her new boyfriend or getting ditched by Ava who has turned into an overachiever, obsessed with studying and joining every school club. It brings up Quinn's old feelings that her disability has her left behind. She tries to talk to Ava about it, but she's too busy with the newest club at school, Defend Kids, which is working frantically to help find two kids who were recently kidnapped from a nearby town.
Suddenly, Defend Kids is all anyone is talking about, and whenever Quinn posts about them on The Whine, she gains tons of new followers and her posts go viral. As the club works to get the message out, more kids in the surrounding area go missing, but it seems like the police and the media aren't doing much about it. When two of Quinn's classmates are kidnapped, the dangers that Defend Kids is trying to fight become all too real.
As Quinn and her friends search for the missing kids, tensions escalate at school, there's an uptick in bullying, and conspiracy theories abound. Before she knows it, Quinn and The Whine are at the center of it all, trying to find out what's really happening. Only the truth might be more deadly than anyone knows...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Former CIA officer Otis (True or False) crafts a timely, pulse-pounding mystery that examines issues surrounding conspiracy theories, media literacy, and social media's prevalence. Canandaigua, N.Y., high school junior Quinn Calvet—who has rheumatoid arthritis and uses a wheelchair—runs a well-known Instagram account called The Whine, where she reports on events within her community, such as track meets and extracurricular proceedings. When fellow student Cade Bird requests that Quinn use The Whine to promote his new club, Defend Kids, she's initially hesitant, seeing Cade as a bully. She relents, however, when he reveals that Defend Kids was founded to help locate two kidnapped youths. After the club—and The Whine—go viral, Quinn, her classmates, and the rest of the community are swept along on Cade's hunt, until cracks begin to appear in the missing kids' mystery. Though the messaging is potent, it is never polemic, and by employing tense atmosphere and perceptive characters, Otis attentively interrogates social media's part in spreading misinformation, and how even the smallest lies can escalate to catastrophic outcomes. Most characters are white. Ages 12–up.