The Takedown
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
"Wang's smart, technocentric debut-Gossip Girl meets M.T. Anderson's Feed-addresses identity, public perception, and social media skewering." -- Publisher's Weekly
Kyla Cheng doesn't expect you to like her. For the record, she doesn't need you to. On track to be valedictorian, she's president of her community club, a debate team champ, plus the yummy Mackenzie Rodriguez has firmly attached himself to her hip. But a week before college applications are due, a video of Kyla "doing it" with her crush-worthy English teacher is uploaded to her school's website. It instantly goes viral, but here's the thing: it's not Kyla in the video.
With time running out, Kyla delves into a world of hackers, haters and creepy stalkers in an attempt to do the impossible-take something off the internet-all while dealing with the fallout from her own karmic footprint. Set in near-future Brooklyn, where privacy is a bygone luxury and every perfect profile masks damning secrets, The Takedown is a stylish, propulsive, and provocative whodunit, asking who would you rely on if your tech turned against you?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wang's smart, technocentric debut Gossip Girl meets M.T. Anderson's Feed addresses identity, public perception, and social media skewering. Senior Kyle Cheng and her beautiful, popular friends are as loathed as they are adored at their swanky Brooklyn prep school. Kyle's grades are top notch, and she excels in her extracurricular activities, but she has enemies; after someone releases a video of her having sex with a teacher it immediately goes viral and upends Kyle's existence, even as she insists it's fake. Wang sets Kyle's story in the near future, inventing all-too-believable tech that has rendered privacy obsolete; "unplugging" is a concept of the distant past. Kyle has a memorable narrative voice that's catty, funny, and somewhat detestable ("You're probably not gonna like me," she warns readers as the book begins), and Kyle's determination to unmask her tormentor will have readers riveted. As Kyle grows increasingly famous, judged globally as both slut and feminist hero, Wang takes on stereotypes of women and girls while creating a vision of the future that will chill readers for its prescience. Ages 14 up.
