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Perfect for fans of Warcross and Black Mirror, Girl Gone Viral is the inventive and timely story of a seventeen-year-old coder's catapult to stardom.
For seventeen-year-old Opal Hopper, code is magic. She builds entire worlds from scratch: Mars craters, shimmering lakes, any virtual experience her heart desires.
But she can't code her dad back into her life. When he disappeared after her tenth birthday, leaving only a cryptic note, Opal tried desperately to find him. And when he never turned up, she enrolled at a boarding school for technical prodigies and tried to forget.
Until now. Because WAVE, the world's biggest virtual reality platform, has announced a contest where the winner gets to meet its billionaire founder. The same billionaire who worked closely with Opal's dad. The one she always believed might know where he went. The one who maybe even murdered him.
What begins as a small data hack to win the contest spirals out of control when Opal goes viral, digging her deeper into a hole of lies, hacks, and manipulation. How far will Opal go for the answers - or is it the attention - she's wanted for years?
"The narrative blends with texts, transcripts, and other technologies, sometimes affecting pacing, but Ahmadi's relatable characters keep the story engaging." - Publishers Weekly
"Despite a slow start, this novel picks up the pace and rounds into a very entertaining story with a protagonist readers will invest in." - School Library Journal
"An immersive ride through the near future with a compelling heroine at the helm." - Kirkus Reviews
"A fast-paced Black Mirror episode with an endearing teenage protagonist." - Marie Claire Magazine
"Tense, twisty, and oh-so-timely, Girl Gone Viral is the perfect thriller for the virtual reality era. Don't start this book unless you can finish in one sitting. I loved it!" - Brendan Reichs, New York Times bestselling author of Nemesis
"In Opal's story, Arvin Ahmadi has crafted a timely and gripping sci-fi tale, grounded in the technology that links us, and what finding ourselves within it can cost." - Alex London, bestselling author of Proxy and Black Wings Beating
This information about Girl Gone Viral was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Arvin Ahmadi grew up outside Washington, DC. He graduated from Columbia University and has worked in the tech industry. When he's not reading or writing books, he can be found watching late-night talk show interviews and editing Wikipedia pages. Down and Across is his first novel, followed by Girl Gone Viral.
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