Nerve

MY THOUGHTS
This book was very fast-paced with a very dark plot! I really enjoyed reading this book!

Vee is not usually the kind of girl who does daring things, her best friend is the one who usually is in the spotlight. One day Vee decides to not be herself and does a dare for NERVE, and online daring game. Her dare ends in a disaster and she vows not to do it again, but when they offer up prizes for doing more dares, she can't resist. She begins to do dare after dare, but as the prizes get more interesting, the game gets deadlier. The game is affecting her relationships, but it also may take her life.

This book is one of those books that are so very uncomfortable to read. If you're like me, you cringe whenever a character has an embarrassing moment. Read a book where a character has to complete dares and you'll cringe the whole way. Yet, I kept reading. I knew that things were going to go so very very wrong, but I had to watch. This book is very interesting in that way. At first the dares just seem ridiculous, then the dares escalate, from dumping water on herself to possible death. While I knew it would get to that point, when we got to the end I was shocked at how horrible things were! Right along with Vee!

I think this book also tells us a lot about our society. In the game, when it gets bad, Vee tries to tell people to call 911 (her dares are being filmed!), but everyone assumes or part of the game or just don't care! It ridiculous! But people aren't going to believe it. Also, Vee's fellow players are more than willing to do whatever it takes to get their prizes. Honestly, Vee was like that up to a point. It brings up the idea on what are you willing to risk for prizes? It sucks to admit, but many people would risk a lot for some stuff.

There is some romance. It won't be a surprise that Ian and Vee get together. You read the synopsis and you know that's what will happen. I was very meh on the romance. This book takes place in a short period of time, so I didn't really see how they could be so close so fast. Bonding other dares? Anyway, it wasn't to bothersome as it didn't distract from the plot, I just wasn't that wild about it.

Lastly, the ending. Fair warning: this book has an open-ended ending.

IN CONCLUSION
I'm aware that my review is a mess and I'm sorry for that. Overall, I thought this book was very fast-paced with very interesting elements! This book was very nerve-wracking (har har) and I felt like I was doing the dares along with Vee. The romance was meh and the ending was just too open, but I overall enjoyed this book!

If you’ve ever been freaked out by something on the Internet, then Nerve by Seattle author Jeanne Ryan is the book for you.

Written for a young adult (YA) audience, it tells the story of a teenager named Vee who gets chosen to play a game about dares called Nerve, watched by people all over the world.

But Nerve is really about how people can unintentionally head down the wrong path in baby steps.

First you do X, and X doesn’t seem that bad. Then you do Y, which is a little bit worse. Then before you know it, you’re involved in Z, and Z is extremely bad. By then it’s too late! You’ve done X, Y and Z and you’re in serious trouble.

Another core component of Nerve is about privacy in the Internet age. Vee “likes” and “shares” things on her ThisIsMe page, and then that data gets collected by the people who run Nerve, and used against her.

A ThisIsMe page gone bad is a plot-line that can scare almost anybody. It’s the perfect jumping off board for a serious conversation about Facebook, Twitter and social media in general.

Can’t wait for the movie!

First off, I need to have a chat with the people on Goodreads who shelved this as “Dystopia,” because that’s the only reason I didn’t read Nerve sooner. Yeesh. I thought it was going to be something similar to The Hunger Games in a reality-tv-where-kids-fight-for-their-lives kind of way. Guess who was wrong? This girl.

In a world that’s probably only about 5 or 10 years ahead of our own, Vee is a sweet, quiet girl who’s tired of standing backstage and waiting in the shadows. When she gets the chance to compete on NERVE, an Internet game based off of dares, she jumps at the chance. Over the course of one crazy night, she faces embarrassing things, scary things, and downright deadly things, all in the name of winning prizes and standing in the sun.

Throughout this novel, Jeanne Ryan did a fantastic job of keeping the suspense and thrill to an absolute maximum. I was on the absolute edge of my seat during a lot of the dares that NERVE came up with. For those who enjoy intense thrill rides, Nerve surely won’t disappoint; this book was non-stop action for over 80% of the time, and Ryan did a great job riding the waves of emotional highs and lows as the dares Vee completed became serious or silly or serious again.

Vee, I think, wasn’t the most fully developed character ever, but when you consider that we’re only inside her head for about 12 hours, I think I’d be willing to let that slide. I do have to complain about her love interest, Ian, though—12 hours is a short time to get to know someone, but the author managed to convey his relationship with Vee realistically, and this book certainly wasn’t a case of instalove. However, because the people behind NERVE are so focused on psyching Vee and the other players out, she wasn’t sure if Ian was trustworthy, and neither was I. It was difficult to transition from view him with approval even as I doubted his motives.

On that note, though, I did love how well Ryan achieved the elements of a psychological thriller in Nerve. The uncertainty and adrenaline rushes that Vee had while playing the game were translated very well onto the page, and the twists NERVE threw at her always caught me by surprise. As a reader I was always in doubt as to how save Vee really was—if NERVE was just messing with her or if she really was in danger.

The end, also, was absolutely fantastic. The last few paragraphs were so perfectly creepy and had a great “gotcha” factor. I seriously hope that there isn’t a sequel in the works, because in my opinion, adding on to things after that final sentence would literally ruin everything Ryan achieved with this book.

Altogether, Nerve was an edgy, edge-of-your-seat ride that grabbed me and didn’t let me go until the very last page. The premise and execution of this novel were brilliant, and I think Ryan has a lot of creative talent to have pulled this off. I look forward to her future novels (even if one of them happens to be a sequel to Nerve).