Wickedpedia by Chris Van Etten

Wickedpedia

Cole and his best friend Gavin do not think too highly of soccer-star Josh.  

For one thing, Josh "stole" Cole's girlfriend Winnie, which he constantly rubs in his face.  To show the school (and Winnie) that Josh is a loser and a cheater, they mess with some Wikipedia pages, which Josh ends up repeating word for word in a history report.  

Not satisfied with just that though, Cole makes up Wikipedia pages for everyone he has beef with... complete with fake death details.  But soon the fake parts of the Wikipedia pages start coming true.  

One by one all the people Cole made pages for start dying exactly how he predicted they would.  And now, someone's written a page for Cole... and time is running short for him to figure this mystery out.

I really wanted to read this book because the blurb and cover sounded (and looked) so damn creepy and exciting.  The idea of this book was really cool.  These 2 boys wanted to get revenge on Cole's ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend, and to do that they manipulated some Wikipedia pages.  It's like a nerd's dream scenario.  I really liked reading about how they set up Josh through to the first few deaths.... then it kind of went downhill.

Things in this book just kind of felt discontinuous.  There were parts that just left me feeling like I missed picking up on something, but when I would go back to clarify, I couldn't come up with anything.  Also, the Red Herring in this book turned out to be a really odd character that I never understood or ever thought he/she was actually the killer.

The ending just sort of rushed up on me and the actual killer turned out to be the person I thought it was from the beginning.  That's always really disappointing in a mystery.  You want to be shocked, and I really wished I could have been.

The writing in this was pretty good though.  I've seen some reviews with people who didn't like it... and towards the end of the book, the writing definitely went downhill, but in the beginning I found that it was what drew me in.

There were a few odd comparisons though... like this for example:

"He couldn't remember them specifically.  Just moments after regaining consciousness they were already vanishing, sucked out of sight like an unlucky animal swallowed in quicksand."

That just struck me as weird to compare dreams you can't remember to animals being sucked into quicksand??  There were quite a few instances of things like this... but at least the author was trying new things, I can't knock him for that.

The last disappointing thing about this book was Lila.  I honestly just wish she didn't exist.  For me, the book would have been better without her altogether.  She played no role except to confuse and annoy me.  As a potential love interest, I wasn't feeling it, and as a "Gossip Girl", she kinda sucked (she didn't try to keep her identity secret at all).

The best part of this book for me is the main character, Cole.  I really liked his personality and the fact that he felt like a real person.  I loved that he was sensitive and had a really big heart, and his cooking hobby was cool too.  I didn't like so much how he was hung up on Winnie, who really wasn't a very likable character at all.  It was confusing to me why he wanted her back when she had zero good or redeeming qualities.  But other than poor choice in women, Cole worked as a main character for me.

I would totally recommend this if it went through a few more revisions, but as is, I really don't think it was that good.  It could be though!!  There's SO much potential in it!

OVERALL:  A YA Mystery/Thriller with a lot of potential, but not a lot else going on.  I enjoyed the main character and the initial story, but as the book went on it started to fall flat.  I think if you are heavily into gore and horror, this could be a book for you, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it.



How I got this book: Thank you to Netgalley and Scholastic Inc. for the opportunity to read and honestly review this book.
Date Published: 6/24/2014
Publisher: Scholastic

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This Book Contains:

• Murder
• Gruesome death scenes
• Cooking
• A "Gossip Girl" type blogger
• Sports
• Twitter feeds
• Wikipedia entries

My Rating: 2/4