Easy Prey

November 5, 2018
Seventeen-year-old Jenna Bradley’s life was torn apart when nude photos of her went viral on her then-boyfriend Troy’s Twitter account. Troy, the school’s basketball star, got away unscathed, as did every person who retweeted his message. Furious, Jenna lights Troy’s car on fire and ends up with a probation officer and an even worse reputation: “You’ve gone from being one of the most promising students at this school to being a juvenile delinquent.” When her teacher, Miss Bailey, partners her with Troy’s best friend, Drew, and Troy’s cousin, Matthew “Mouse” Maguire, for a class project on privacy and the internet, things get more uncomfortable. Then someone releases naked pictures of Miss Bailey for the whole school to see, and the three students become the main suspects. Lo (How It Ends) weaves together a robust narrative about privacy and revenge. Through flashbacks, Lo slowly pieces together the events that led up to the damaging incident. She successfully creates sympathetic characters whose complicated, authentic choices leave readers with an understanding that nothing is as lacking in nuance as it might seem. Ages 14–up. Agent: Mackenzie Brady Watson, Stuart Krichevsky Literary.

August 1, 2018

Gr 9 Up-During the course of their law class, Drew, Jenna, and Mouse obtain racy and sexual pictures of their teacher Miss Bailey. They agree to delete them and never bring it up again, but when the pictures show up on an anonymous blog, they realize one of them is hiding something. Drew, charming and well-off, seems to have it all and is best friends with the school's most popular guy, Troy. Mouse, the computer geek, is desperate to prove his father wrong, get out from under the shadow of his cousin Troy, and get into MIT by any means necessary. And Jenna, former girlfriend of Troy and good girl-turned-rebel, was victim to her own picture scandal the year before. They swear they didn't post the pictures, but they all have secrets they would do anything to protect. This well-paced whodunit has plenty of twists and turns and revelations to keep readers on their toes. The characters feel completely authentic and tangible. When things start to unravel for the trio, teens will be emotionally invested in the protagonists' fates. Though at times the preachiness and heavy-handed message may take young people out of their reading experience, this book strikes a necessary and much-needed chord about sexting and the distribution of inappropriate material in high school. VERDICT A relevant book and first selection for any public and high school library.-Erik Knapp, Davis Library, Plano, TX

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 15, 2018
Sexting, lies, and consequences.Jenna, Drew, and Mouse are thrown together for their senior law final project. Instead of being the easy A Drew expected, the class ignites controversy about dangerous social media issues. Jenna hasn't spoken to her ex-boyfriend Troy since the day he publicly tweeted topless pictures of her. She has since cut her hair short and set his truck on fire, exchanging her blonde hair for black and ballet shoes for a court-mandated anger management class. Drew is an unapologetic player on and off the basketball court but finds himself drawn to Jenna's newfound strength. Uber-intelligent Mouse is bound for MIT and painfully in love with Jenna. He stands to lose everything if anyone finds out that the basketball team hired him to build a database to house photos of naked girls. What all three students have in common are grievances against their law teacher, Mrs. Bailey. When shocking photos of Mrs. Bailey are posted on the internet, the threesome begin to suspect each other while confronting their own moral transgressions. Lo (How It Ends, 2016) creates realistic, multidimensional characters while exploring the legal and ethical ramifications of privacy as it plays out in a hormonally charged high school environment. Drew and Jenna are white, and Mouse and Troy are black.A provocative story about the consequences of poor decisions in our digital world. (Fiction. 14-18)

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January 1, 2019
When nude photos of a teacher are posted anonymously online, it becomes clear that three students in her senior law seminar--whose project topic is ironically about online privacy--each has his or her own motivation for publishing the (deceitfully obtained) pictures. Lo's novel effectively traces each student's personal history and raises complex ethical questions on its way to the truth.

(Copyright 2019 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)