Fake: A thrillingly paced, timely novel about identity and our digital lives

by Ele Fountain

Overview

A thrillingly paced, timely novel about identity and our digital lives from the award-winning author of Refugee 87

Imagine a world where your only friends are virtual, and big tech companies control access to food, healthcare and leisure. This is Jess's world.

But when she turns fourteen, Jess can go to school with other children for the first time. Most of them hate the 'real' world, but Jess begins to question whether the digital world is 'perfect' after all.

Back home, her sister Chloe's life-saving medication is getting ever more expensive. Determined to help, Jess risks everything by using skills forbidden in the cyber-world, only to stumble on something explosive. Something that will turn her whole world upside down.

It's up to Jess to figure out exactly what is real, and what is fake – Chloe's survival depends on it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781782692904
Publisher:	Steerforth Press
Publication date:	06/06/2023
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	36,728
Product dimensions:	5.06(w) x 7.77(h) x 0.78(d)
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

About the Author

Ele Fountain worked as an editor in children's publishing where she helped launch and nurture the careers of many prize-winning and bestselling authors. Ele's debut novel, Boy 87 (published in the US as Refugee 87), won four awards and was nominated for nine more, including the Waterstones Children's Book Prize. She lives in Hampshire with her husband and two daughters.

Editorial Reviews

A compelling and provocative novel for 10+, asking searching questions about our own online ways of living” — Guardian

“An all-too-real thriller for the mature end of the age range” — Observer

“A compellingly-told modern fable.” — Katya Balen, author of The Space We're In

“I loved this future world... packed with adventure, heart and human emotions” — Ross Welford, author of The 1,000 Year Old Boy

From the Publisher

2023-04-12
Disaster looms following an amateur hacker’s moment of carelessness.

Addressing several real, ominous trends, Fountain posits a dismal near future a few decades after an antibiotic-resistant version of scarlet fever has driven society into isolated family groups and allowed cybergatekeeper Global Connections to gain control of the world’s economy. Old enough at last to leave virtual learning behind, 14-year-old Jessica joins an incoming class of girls, some of whom had never met another child except online, at a physical boarding school. As if a heavy course load and challenges like learning to play team sports on real rather than virtual fields aren’t stressful enough, Jess is concerned for how her already strapped family is going to pay for the increasingly expensive medication needed to keep her little sister alive. This leads her to furtive experiments with illegal hacking techniques learned from an old book to explore Global Connections’ company files. Suddenly unable to get in touch with her family, she learns to her horror not only that the medication’s escalating cost had been directly linked to a decline in her family’s online purchases, but that thanks to her lack of expertise, now they’ve all been ruthlessly “deleted” by the corporation as security risks. Though the author engineers a resolution that will strike even uncritical readers as contrived and overly tidy, her premise and picture of cyberdependent daily life cut close enough to the bone to spur reflection and discussion. The cast reads White.

Chillingly plausible. (Dystopian science fiction. 9-12)

Kirkus Reviews