#scandal by Sarah Ockler
US Release Date: June 17th 2014
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Series: Standalone
Source: PulseIt
Ebook, 416 pages
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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..
Summary from Goodreads
Lucy Vacarro never planned to go to prom, but when Eliana, her best friend, asks her to take her place because she’s sick and she can’t go, Lucy can’t refuse. Rather than slaying zombies all night, she goes to Lavender Oaks’ prom at the arm of Ellie’s boyfriend Cole. But Lucy has been in love with Cole since the first time they met three years ago and when he invites her to the after-prom party, she knows it only means disaster. The next day, a picture of them kissing with a bunch of other embarrassing pictures of the other guests are posted on her Facebook wall with her stolen phone, framing her as the perpetrator. The whole school is after her, but Lucy has a plan: finding who did it, reveal the truth, have her life back and her best friend back.
#scandal was good. Not extraordinary, but good. I enjoyed some aspects of it like how the book dealt with bullying and the writing, but a lot of things were missing to make me care. I didn’t really care for the characters, for the romance or the mysteries.
First, the characters. They were plain. Lucy, Ellie, Cole, Griffin, Franklin. I felt bad for Lucy, but nothing more. The principal was not believable and she didn’t do anything to help Lucy and actually stop the bullying. I can’t believe not a teacher heard students call Lucy a slut and a narc in the corridors or saw the pamphlets. At least, some cool students stood up to her like the (e)Pic kids. I liked Ellie because even though she was betrayed by her friends, she felt bad for Lucy and tried to stop some students from harassing her. Some people would only think of revenge or that she deserved it, but not her in spite of everything that had happened. She’s a good person with a big heart. She was the most likeable character. Nothing to say about Griffin, she was funny at the beginning, but I kind of hate her now. Lavender Oaks students were just infuriating. Two weeks of so much drama for not so much really. I don’t know why they were so mad at Lucy, it was just funny pictures of drunk people posted on Facebook. If they didn’t want pictures to show up on the internet, they just had to not act stupid and drunk. It’s not like they didn’t do these things. Olivia made me glad I’m not in high school anymore!
Lucy and Cole’s relationship didn’t interest me at all. Maybe it can be explained by the fact that we don’t see them fall in love, we are just told that Lucy has been in love with him since the first time she met him so we don’t get a chance to fall in love with him ourselves? Or that there’s almost no romance during the book, but some bits here and there so how are we suppose to care about them when we don’t even see them loving each other? Cole is caring but was barely in the book, the end is cute, but nothing more.
I didn’t care for the mysteries either. There are two big mysteries : finding who stole Lucy’s phone and posted the pictures on her Facebook and who is Miss Demeanour, the Facebook page that made me think of Gossip Girl. I was a little bit surprise of who stole Lucy’s phone because I just couldn’t see a good motive for this character. The motive was childish. Almost destroy someone’s life and reputation just because of that? I can’t say more without having a full paragraph under spoiler, but yeah… I guess people bully for less than that, but it felt ridiculous to me in this book.
The bullying/cyberbullying part was really painful. Even more painful when nobody was really doing something about it. I’m not sure if I liked how it was handled, but I liked the topic. I loved Sarah Ockler‘s writing and the pop culture references of Veronica Mars, The Walking Dead and The Hunger Games.
Overall, a good read. I don’t know if I recommend it. I actually enjoy reading it, it was a fast and entertaining read even though everything I said, but that’s it. Like I said, nothing extraordinary.
World Building 1 2 3 4 5 |
Plot 1 2 3 4 5 |
Characters 0 1 2 3 4 5 |
Romance 1 2 3 4 5
First Line
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a picture tagged on Miss Demeanor’s Scandal of the Month page is worth about a million.”
Favorite Quotes
Beneath his touch, my heart flops like a beached fish, and I turn my face away from his gaze.”
Author’s Info:
Sarah Ockler is the bestselling author of #scandal, The Book of Broken Hearts, Bittersweet, Fixing Delilah, and Twenty Boy Summer. Her books have received numerous accolades, including ALA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults, Girls’ Life Top 100 Must Reads, Indie Next List, and nominations for YALSA Teens’ Top Ten, and NPR’s Top 100 Teen Books. She lives in Washington with her husband, Alex. From Simon & Schuster.
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