Carol
Snow
$17.99,
Hardcover
Henry
Holt and Co. , 2013
978-0805095715
Genre:
Science Fiction
Age:
12+
Description:
Freesia’s life is perfect. She wakes up in her gigantic beach side
house on the tropical island of Agalinas each morning to the cooing
of her two pet peacocks and a breakfast coffee served in bed by her
mother. Every day is blissful sunshine and she gets to spend it
buying clothes upon clothes at fancy dress shops throughout town.
When she goes to school she is involved in cultural immersion classes
in which she gets to do stuff like eat Korean food. However, her life
on the island lately has been having some glitches. Here and there
are sudden blackouts. Some students have been there one day and
disappeared the next. But most frightening of all is the day that
Freesia looks in the mirror and doesn’t see herself anymore—her
perfect body and looks are gone, replaced by a slightly chubby
version of her with—gasp!—fizzy hair and bad skin. However,
Freesia knows that it is better to not think about things too hard.
Unfortunately for her though, her perfect existence is about to pop.
Opinion:
Bubble World is . . . odd. Unfortunately for it I think that
it might lose some readers because of its oddness. The book starts
off very unusually. Freesia and her world are just weird. It’s
never clearly stated (in the beginning) if her world is some future perfect utopia or if
it’s all in her head or if it is a real world in the future.
Freesia has her own weird technology (“bubbles” that are her
version of a phone—it automatically shows her where and what her
friends and enemies are doing), she’s got her own language, her
schooling seems to be made up of shopping and partying, and her world
even has its own social customs (as couples become “linked”
together and if they break up they automatically become enemies). The
other problem with the beginning of the book is that Freesia is so
self-centered and vapid. You really want to just kill her or at least smack her pretty hard. It’s
such an odd start to a book that you don’t know what is going on or
what to expect. However, things pick up when a glitch in her world
sends Freesia into the real world where she is known as Francine.
Turns out Freesia is living in a total virtual reality called Bubble
World. It is an experimental learning environment where a teen is
emerged in a bubble (which takes up their entire bedroom) and are
hooked up to machines and they are supposed to be participating in a highly educational
and individualized program in this virtual reality called Agalinas.
Freesia doesn’t like finding herself awake on the other side—in
real life. She is so separated from her parents (who are nothing like
the perfect ones in Bubble World) and her sister who calls her an
“it” or a “thing.” When given the chance to go back into the
program she jumps at it but doesn’t take the mind wiping drug to
make her forget about the real world and what she discovers is
shocking. Her best friend and potential boyfriend has been
manipulating the system and he knows all about the reality of Bubble
World—the creator is taking their parents' money and leading them to
believe they are really being highly educated when, in fact, they
aren’t learning anything. Unfortunately for them the creator finds
out about their knowledge and permanently deactivates their accounts.
At first, Freesia is only concerned with getting back into Bubble
World but the creator says she broke her contract. When her mother
discovers how educationally stunted Freesia really is—and a rival
blogger beats her to the story—she realizes a new goal to point out
what a fraud Bubble World is. In the end, Freesia does get a chance
to go back in but she finds a completely different world than the one
she called home and begins to wonder if her real home is the one she
exited years before. The only really bad part about this book is how
it opens so weirdly and could lose some readers before they get to
the good part. Freesia starts off as a vapid girl but, in the end,
ends up growing. When she discovers what her best friend looks like
in person the old Fressia would be repulsed but the new Freesia
actually still cares about him. The world that Snow has created is
amazing! The idea of a guy making money and being irresponsible
toward his clients was intriguing. The only thing that I didn’t
like was that Freesia’s reason for going into Bubble World in the
first place wasn’t really explained all that well. All we get is
that her long time best friend starting hanging out with a new
popular girl and the popular girl made her choose and she didn’t
choose Francine. While that is sad and a fact of life sometimes among
friendships are we really to believe that she was so depressed (?)
that her parents agreed to letting their daughter enter a virtual
world where she remained for years? That part seems a little too
farfetched to believe. However, overall this book was a surprisingly
good read and I can't wait to see what my teen reviewers think.
Thanks
to the people at Henry Holt for the ARC for the YA Galley Group!
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