Girl Mans Up

Girl Mans Up  by M-E Girard

Pen doesn't want to be a boy.  And she isn't.  So why does everybody have these weird ideas about her?

Pen likes to dress in baggy jeans and her brother Jimmy's t-shirts.  She doesn't want to be her mom's "princesa."  She doesn't want to get married to some guy and go to nursing school. She wants to hang out with her buddies--guys like Colby, who plays first-person shooter video games almost as well as Pen, and who totally has her back.  

Or...does he?

Readers will see that Colby lacks the loyalty and respect Pen craves long before Pen catches on.  But when Colby tries to sexually assault her, even Pen can see what a ratbag her "friend" really is.  At that point, Pen has to make some changes.  And none of the choices she might make will be easy.

This book features some fabulous allies, including an older brother and (to Pen's surprise) a couple of girls.  

Three cheers for a strong gender-fluid protagonist, a teen romance that does not fly apart at the seams by the end of the book, and a sibling who is friend, brother, and parent to Pen.

Recommended for readers ages 12 and up.

Erebos : it's a game. It watches you.

Erebos  by Ursula Poznanski
translation from the German by Judith Pattinson

Like most of his friends, Nick Dunsmore enjoys playing video games.  But he's never played anything like Erebos.  The rules are strange:
*  Always play alone.
*  Do not talk to anyone about the game.
*  Don't copy the disk unless instructed by the game.
and strangest of all:
*  You have only one chance to play.  If you break the rules, or if your character in the game dies, the game is over and you can never play again.

Strangest of all, the game itself seems to know when players break the rules.  But how?

As more of Nick's classmates join the game, things get even more bizarre, especially when the game insists that players conduct "missions" in the real world.  Some missions seem quite innocent, like picking up a box hidden in a park and hiding it in a different park.  But soon enough, the missions become sinister.

The story is nearly as compelling as the game itself.  Players quickly become addicted to the adventure, and many are willing to do anything to gain status within the world of Erebos.

Yes, anything....

More dire than Ready Player One (Cline, 2011), with less gore and fewer technology details than REAMDE (Stephenson, 2011), this game-gone-bad novel will appeal mostly to teen gamers.  Sophisticated readers may trip on some of the setting details, some politically incorrect racist and sexist statements which may or may not be a result of translation into English from German, and the distinctly Scooby Doo ending: "foiled by those meddling kids!"

Recommended for ages 13 to adult.