Review Detail

SCARED LITTLE RABBITS follows Nora (aka Eleanor, Lowercase) as she sets out on a summer camp adventure that resulted in a missing person, as we know from the beginning of the book. We then backtrack to the start of the camp to meet the characters and find out what happened.

Nora loves programming and so is very excited to be accepted into and attending the camp, which previously hosted Emerson and resulted in the creation of InstaLove, a game which combines instagram and pokemon go into an interactive game where you score points for being social with other people. Nora is pretty intimidated by the others attending, especially since it seems like they have all been there before and she is the only new one.

She immediately crushes on Maddox, whom she accidentally runs into, but it seems like he is in a relationship with Eleanor, who everyone says is the uppercase Eleanor and so they nickname her Lowercase as a result. However, Eleanor and Maddox's relationship is complex, considering the ways their families are connected and how often they fight. They break up, but then Eleanor says he has to continue to look like her boyfriend until the Maker Fair, an event which ends the camp where the inventions are examined and one is given a monetary prize.

The other main character is Reese, who basically forces everyone to beta test the changes she is making to InstaLove by wearing augmented reality glasses all the time. The book is primarily about Nora navigating the social situations with a small amount of thriller/mystery at the end when the what and then where and who are revealed.

I found the book a little difficult to push myself through, perhaps due to all the focus on Nora being awkward. The plot seemed to drag a bit due to that. I actually really enjoyed the ending sections, so I wish those had been scattered throughout to up the ante and take us back and forth with the thriller and day-to-day. I did like that we got some of Eleanor's perspective, but it would have been better to have it add a little more to the plot, it just seemed more like rambling (which is probably because it was basically her diary).

In terms of the romance, it felt very instalove (not the app) where they are immediately so into each other without really getting to know each other. The story is told from Maddox and Nora's perspectives so the reader learns about each of them, but they do not have many heart-to-hearts, if any. I prefer to have the relationship built on more of that generally, and I had a hard time really seeing it/cheering for it.

Overall, I really liked the ending, but found the lead up to not be a thrilleresque as I hoped.