Fake by Ele Fountain

 

Fake by Ele Fountain.

Published 19th May 2022 by Pushkin Children's Books.

From the cover of the book:

IN A DIGITAL WORLD, IT’S HARD TO KNOW WHAT’S REAL

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.

***********

Welcome to a dystopian near future so close to that you can almost taste it. The failure of antibiotics and an epidemic of scarlet fever has made this a world where drastic changes in the way children are brought up and educated have become necessary. Before the age of fourteen it is forbidden for children to mix with each other, beyond contact with their own siblings. to reduce the risk of infection. Lessons are all taken via an online learning service, and children only ever see their friends through the medium of a computer screen.

The time has now come for fourteen-year-old Jess to leave the quiet safety of her rural home with her parents, and sister Chloe who suffers from a chronic respiratory condition that requires ever more expensive medicine that they can barely afford. Jess is both excited and nervous about what lies ahead, afraid to leave her family and her close friend Finn, who they have been mixing with against the rules. Jess is the only one from her local learning cohort who is being sent away to a different school, and she will be among strangers for the first time in her life.

School is a revelation to Jess, for reasons both good and bad. Most of her classmates have never met another child face to face, and it is difficult to find things in common with these strangers - especially since their leisure hours revolve around shopping and virtual games that they all seem to have the money to indulge in freely, unlike Jess. She finds herself with an unexpected edge, having grown up in an environment where physical activity is a way of life, something her classmates who have spent all their time in a virtual world really struggle with. School also allows Jess to develop her innate musical talent, and display her programming skills - programming skills that have made her into an accomplished hacker.

Determined to put her skills to work to help her family cope with the cost of Chloe's treatment, Jess hacks into the central system that controls their lives, and accidentally stumbles across a shocking secret. What she has done sets in motion a chain of events that put her family in danger, revealling secrets about her own father, and the sinister reason why she has been sent to this school. It's time for Jess to discover who she can trust, and what's real or fake about the way they are all forced to live..

It's rare for me to be tempted by a YA novel these days, but sometimes I come across a little gem of a concept aimed at younger readers and Fake by Ele Fountain is indeed such a treasure.

Fountain has crafted a deceptively clever dystopian novel here, with a well-conceived, page-turning story-line infused with mystery and suspense, that is pitched perfectly for the YA audience and above. I'm very impressed by the way she introduces a myriad of thought-provoking themes throughout this tale, exploring issues around antibiotic resistance, chronic medical conditions, big-pharma, consumerism, and corporate greed, in such an engaging way, and really opens up the opportunity for conversation about them - all while carrying you along on the tide of a cracking story. There are very interesting threads about isolation and loss too, which resonate with the tricky pandemic times we have all had to negotiate in recent times.

I love the premise of this novel, making the virtual world the focus of the story and examining the advantages, and critically the harsh pitfalls, of relying too heavily on living our lives online - especially the way algorithms can be manipulated to control us. There is plenty of heart here too, and you get very caught up in the human side of the story, which plucks nicely at the heart-strings. There is also scope for an intriguing sequel that I really want to read, as I am not ready to let go of these characters quite yet. I very much hope Ele Fountain picks up their story again, because a follow-up could be very exciting indeed.

Fake is available to buy now in paperback, ebook and audio formats.

Thank you to Pushkin for sending me an ecopy of this book in return for an honest review, and for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

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, won four awards and was nominated for nine more, including the Waterstones Children's Book Prize, and Lost won the 2021 Portsmouth Book Award. She lives in Hampshire with her husband and two daughters.