Nerve by Jeanne Ryan

Vee has a boring life compared to her best friend, Sydney, who is the star in the school play and is amazing at whatever she does.

But when Sydney kisses Vee's crush for over a month longer during the play than was necessary, Vee feels betrayed and decides to do a dare for the online reality hit NERVE.

NERVE is basically real live dares that are filmed live onto the Internet. Each dare has a prize for completing each dare to entice the player. The more dares, the bigger and better the prizes are until the players get a chance to participate in the Final Round.

Along with NERVE the players have to deal with Watchers: people who've paid to watch the players either online or in person, where they can win money for whomever posts the best live stream of the dares as they are happening.

Vee didn't really think her little dare would get that much attention. But after her and her wingman, Tommy, post it on NERVE's website, she's wanted for another dare - this time with a new partner to do dares with, Ian.

What started off as a way to do something daring and different than her normal personality is now becoming very serious.

And Vee's prizes are becoming more and more useful for when she finishes high school.

But are the dares becoming too hard? Can Vee handle the intensity of the dares or will she finally give up and lose all of the prizes that she has won? What is NERVE worth to Vee? Read Nerve by Jeanne Ryan to find out!

My Thoughts/Reflections
When I first read the synopsis of this book on Goodreads, I had the impression that it would be an online version of The Hunger Games, but I was definitely wrong.

This is just a very real and public game of Truth or Dare only without the "truth" option.

But don't be fooled - NERVE is not nice in all of their dares and they definitely hit home for every one of their players to make the dares hard to complete for the juicy prizes.

Vee is a hard character to love. She's easily likable but there are times when I either want to strangle her or slap her.

She does a great job with the dares, though, and trying to find ways around the rules that NERVE gave her for each dare. She's known as shy by her friends, but after this night of dares she won't be called that again.

So, yes, I did like this book. It was different, especially the topics in this novel making it fresh and new in today's YA literature.

But it wasn't a novel that I fell in love with automatically. I find time to set it down rather than staying up ungodly hours to finish it.

One thing I did like was the twists. A friend backstabs Vee, a new friendship occurs, and truths are revealed throughout each dare. It kept me on my toes til the last page.

I would definitely recommend this to teens who are looking for a bit of an adventure and a side book from The Hunger Games, even though it's considerable different. And anyone looking for a futuristic/sci-fi novel might find this rather interesting, especially with the different technology that's in this novel.

Also, so far this is a standalone novel so I won't be biting my nails to wait for the sequel, even though Ryans did leave it open at the end for another novel to be written.