Review by Booklist Review
Emilia Romero has good grades, excellent extracurriculars, and a boyfriend everyone drools over. But these are a cover for her secret passion: Guardians League Online, the premier multiplayer online battle arena game. As a member of Team Fury, she's poised to become a rarity: an elite female gamer in a male-dominated space--as long as her parents and friends never find out. Enter new student Jake, a long-lost childhood friend who is also a high-level GLO player. Emilia scrambles to prevent Jake from spilling the beans about her online alter ego, inadvertently falling in love with him in the process. Told mainly by Emilia with occasional POV shifts to Jake, this is a lively game-infused romance. Nedd has the lingo of online e-sports down pat, giving the game and its players an authenticity that many other gaming-oriented YA books lack. Moreover, Nedd ably uses gaming to slice through many topics relevant to today's teens, such as racism and sexism. Gamers looking for a fun, relatable story with depth and heart should absolutely give this book a read.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
By day, Philadelphia high school junior Emilia Romero, who is Puerto Rican, is an overachiever: popular honors student, field hockey team captain, and junior vice president candidate, with her Black best friend Penny as presidential hopeful. By night, however, Emilia is KNOX, newest member of Team Fury, a ruthless, top-tier squad in the game Guardians League Online. Until now, Emilia has kept her identities separate from friends, family, and teammates. But then Fury is invited to GLO's first live tournament, with glory--and $200,000--on the line. There, Emilia runs into white schoolmate Jake Hooper. As the tournament progresses, Emilia and Jake forge an emotional connection, despite being destined to battle one another. When Emilia's life threatens to collapse due to overabundant responsibilities and secrets, she must fight for what she wants most. Nedd's cast is well-rounded and inclusive, while gaming sequences shine with verisimilitude. Emilia's voice adeptly incorporates teen confusion and laugh-out-loud observations, and Jake's online team chat offers another perspective. In this gripping debut, Nedd balances drama, humor, and romance with an expert touch, alongside a searing examination of the insidiousness of misogyny in e-sports. Ages 12--up. Agent: Steven Salpeter, Curtis Brown. (June)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 10 Up--Puerto Rican teen Emilia Romero's true passion is playing the esports game Guardians League Online. When she's not playing field hockey, studying, or grudgingly accepting matcha lattes from her popular boyfriend, Connor, Emilia is secretly playing GLO. She's the only girl on her team, Fury, and is a good player. Her parents keep close tabs on her academic performance and expect her to attend their alma mater, UPenn, but Emilia has her eye on colleges in NYC and Chicago. She is determined to keep her gaming life separate from everything and everyone else, and has mostly succeeded thus far. Emilia's competition title is even KNOX, as in Fort Knox, emphasizing how little she wants her identity to be known. As someone who experienced severe and persistent sexual harassment and threats by other gamers before, maintaining anonymity is crucial for her. However, at a major GLO competition, Emilia runs into Jake Hooper, an old friend from childhood who plays on a rival team. Jake is awkward and sweet, apologizes too often, and has been crushing on Emilia for years. While he promises to keep her secret safe, Emilia is doxxed by another gamer, putting her and her family's safety at risk. Emilia and Jake are realistic teenage characters--they are complex, make mistakes, and care a lot about what other people think of them. Told in dual POV, readers get an in-depth view of Emilia and Jake's lives. Readers should be advised that certain themes in the novel may be triggering, such as threats of rape, bullying, and sexual harassment. Nedd's knowledge of esports is highly evident throughout and would be most appreciated by avid gamers. VERDICT A great pick for video game nerds and fans of Brittney Morris's Slay.--Jess Gafkowitz, Brooklyn P.L.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
How long can Emilia Romero keep up her charade? At Hillford West, her Pennsylvania high school, Emilia is a savvy junior set on living up to her hardworking Puerto Rican parents' high expectations. At night, she is a heavyweight gamer losing sleep doing what she actually wants to do: kicking serious offensive butt in Guardians League Online, a team-based, multiplayer shooting game. When the chance at winning glory--and $200,000--in an amateur GLO tournament to be held in a new esports stadium proves too tempting, Emilia risks revealing her true identity in order to play with the notoriously ruthless Team Fury. Meanwhile, Jake Hooper is a sensitive, emotionally aware White gamer who bonded with Emilia over an arcade game during a fourth grade birthday party and has never forgotten her. When their paths cross again at the GLO tournament, where Jake is also a competitor, their seemingly opposite lives become deeply intertwined. In this delightfully entertaining romance, Nedd covers an impressive range of topics with a rare combination of hilarity, sarcasm, and sincerity: toxic masculinity, doxxing, gaming culture wars, the pressure cooker of Latinx parenting, and, yes, love. Gamers and nongamers alike will squeal, cheer, and boo in this page-turner in which the high-stakes action within the tournament mixes perfectly with the vulnerable blossoming of Emilia and Jake's relationship. A sure winner. (Romance. 13-18) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
