Click’d by Tamara Ireland Stone – Spoiler Free ARC Review

Title: Click’d
Author: Tamara Ireland Stone
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Publication Date: September 5, 2017
Genre(s): Middle Grade, Contemporary
Source: NetGalley
Pages: 208
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Synoposis

Allie Navarro can’t wait to show her best friends the app she built at CodeGirls summer camp. CLICK’D pairs users based on common interests and sends them on a fun (and occasionally rule-breaking) scavenger hunt to find each other. And it’s a hit. By the second day of school, everyone is talking about CLICK’D.

Watching her app go viral is amazing. Leaderboards are filling up! Everyone’s making new friends. And with all the data Allie is collecting, she has an even better shot at beating her archenemy, Nathan, at the upcoming youth coding competition. But when Allie discovers a glitch that threatens to expose everyone’s secrets, she has to figure out how to make things right, even if that means sharing the computer lab with Nathan. Can Allie fix her app, stop it from doing any more damage, and win back the friends it hurt-all before she steps on stage to present CLICK’D to the judges?

New York Times best-selling author Tamara Ireland Stone combines friendship, coding, and lots of popcorn in her fun and empowering middle-grade debut.

Review

This book is a great one for younger readers as it allows the reader to be exposed to some great lessons. Questions about friendship, achieving your goals, and problem solving are all addressed throughout this novel. Allie creates a new friendship app with the hopes of bringing new people together, however it starts to put a strain on her friend group. Too her surprise, her nemesis appears in the top of her leader board as well. This is the least of Allie’s worries though when a glitch threatens her app.

Allie knows this glitch will cost her the competition is she can not fix it and is torn on what to do. In a situation that I would normally disagree with, Allie decides not to ask for help and try to fix the glitch on her own. This is one the first tropes I noticed in this book and is one that I see in plenty of Middle Grade and YA books. Normally asking for help solves most of the problems that the protagonist runs into, but I don’t know if that would have been the case in this book.

Allie’s app also exposes her to new, unexpected friends. This was a fun story line to follow because at first it looks like it was going to go one way (fairly trope-y) but it ends up following a different path. This conversation this book opens about friendship is great for readers of all ages as it reminds us that new friendships do not have to take the place of old ones.

The end of the book did not go the way I thought it was going to, but honestly I liked it. It wasn’t as predictable as I thought it was going to be and it ended on a pretty high note. Tamara’s first step into the Middle Grade world was a strong one!

Final Thoughts

Click’d was a really fun Middle Grade book that was such a quick read. I definitely recommend this one for those in the mood for a quick lighthearted read. Fans of contemporary will really enjoy this one!

Was this book a bit trope-y? Yes, but they did a good job with leading to the messages this book was trying to covey: girls can code; competitions are fun, but watch the competitive nature; don’t be afraid to ask for help, and friends can be found in unlikely places.