The Hive

July 15, 2019
This well-paced collaboration between spouses Lyga (Bang) and Baden, a ghostwriter, takes social media, mob violence, and hacking to extremes, pitting a 17-year-old against a frighteningly believable crowdsourced justice system. After the death of her father, a legendary computer genius, biracial Cassie—a formidable coder—and her professor mother are forced to relocate. At her new school, Cassie tries to ingratiate herself with the queen bees by posting a tasteless joke about the Trump-like president’s grandchild. In this near future, the Heuristic Internet Vetting Engine polices internet misbehavior, aggregating Likes, Dislikes, and Condemns to calculate the punishment level, which is meted out by regular people acting as HIVE mobs. When her joke goes viral, resulting in a high Condemn level, Cassie and her mother flee, and after connecting with a hacker group, Cassie gradually discovers a conspiracy with government connections. Offering heart-
pounding action while asking difficult questions, this novel is perfect for fans of thought-provoking cyberthrillers. Ages 14–up.

July 1, 2019

Gr 9 Up-Who better to police public behavior than the public themselves? Individual posts and actions can be Liked, Disliked, and Condemned, and Hive Justice is swift and inventive. When a snarky comment goes viral, Cassie McKinney finds herself at Level 6: the Hive Mob can kill on sight. Cassie, an expert hacker, goes on the run, stumbling across other renegades, but she's not sure whom she can trust. Peppered with coding lingo and hashtag commentary, the novel reads like a movie waiting to happen, with breathless, nonstop action; rooftop chases; and an attractive, diverse group of characters. Authors Lyga and Baden, working from a concept from actor Jennifer Beals and producer Tom Jacobson, take current social media ideas to the next level, with a population comfortable with camera everywhere, a governmental mandate to be connected, and Blinq, an all-encompassing platform. VERDICT A gripping immersion in social media gone wrong. Buy Marie Lu's Warcross and Ernest Cline's Ready Player One first, and consider this if there is money remaining in the budget.-Maggie Knapp, Trinity Valley School, Fort Worth, TX

Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2019
Trial and punishment are carried out via a social media process called the Hive in this futuristic thriller created by a team that includes an actress, a film producer, and two writers. The daughter of a famous hacker, high school senior Cassie is still grieving her dad's recent death. Her mother, a classics professor named Rachel, is struggling both to make ends meet and with the ongoing presence of National Security Agency agents who keep nosing around her late husband's doings. Alternating between Cassie's and her mother's third-person narration, the difficult relationship between the pair provides a believable emotional backbone for this high-concept, fast-paced, sometimes overly detailed cautionary tale of the morally fraught territory that results when technology and mob mentality mix. After Cassie makes a tasteless joke online about the new grandchild of the president (a figure who is so obviously Trump that the pretense of his name being fictionalized seems pointless), she must flee the ensuing violent wrath of the Hive, discovering its secrets along the way. Readers may be frustrated by the intelligent and sarcastic Cassie's apparent inability to identify people who are clearly likely to betray her. Cassie is biracial--her mother is white, and her dad was black--and the secondary characters are realistically diverse. Energetic but at times heavy-handed, this dystopian tale seems destined for a screen adaptation. (Science fiction. 14-18)

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June 1, 2019
Grades 9-12 In their first collaboration, Lyga and Baden offer a near-future dystopia, where social media dictates society's behavior, that feels all too real. The eponymous Hive is really the collective term for users on BLINQ, an app officially sanctioned by the U.S. government that has immediate, devastating real-world consequences. When high-school senior Cassie makes a controversial joke about the president's newborn grandchild, the Hive swiftly condemns her via what is essentially a dislike or downvote button. Stakes skyrocket when the president starts a doxing campaign and the government classifies Cassie as an unprecedented Level 6, or #killonsight, and suddenly she is not safe in public. Cassie finds herself among a small but brilliant resistance group with questionable motives themselves. Ultimately, she makes a move that neither the Hive nor readers will see coming. The husband-and-wife writing team capture the horrors of mob mentality in this gripping, tense, action-packed thriller that will appeal to fans of Marie Lu's Warcross (2017) or Gregory Scott Katsoulis' All Rights Reserved (2017).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)