Click'd (Click'd, 1)

If you like coding, technology, competition, and friendship, this novel is for you!

Allie Navarro is excited to share her new app with her best friends after spending the summer at a coding camp. She’s made great friends who helped her develop an app that she so successfully presented that she’s been invited to an exclusive competition for gaming apps. She isn’t the only coding genius in her school. Her nemesis (in her mind), Nathan, has also been invited. There are very few people invited to present. Allie tells Nathan that she will beat him. They both present to the class, but only Allie’s is truly ready to go live. The class loves the idea, so she gives them the link to download the app.

Once Click’d goes out to the show more students, the school goes crazy. You fill out a series of questions and then it joins the database. The algorithm then matches people with others with similar interests, so it’s a “find a friend” app. There’s a Leaderboard of your top 10. Kids are running all over the school, touching phones together, and meeting new people. Competition is one week away, so Allie has a week to get statistics, pictures, and stories of her app making a difference. Oh no, there’s a glitch! When a problem arises and Allie needs help combing the code, she has to ask Nathan for help. She helps him; he’ll help her. Can they finish before the competition and who will win?

There’s nothing wrong with the novel. It’s fun and teaches good lessons about the dangers of making assumptions about other people as well as the value of honesty in relationships with friends. I rarely go crazy about a book that has technology in it. Technology is important in the novel as a tool and as a way to show readers that you can achieve a lot when you are interested and apply yourself, however, the novel is ultimately about people and how to treat them. I wasn’t glued to the book; it was perfectly fine, nothing special. I do think many of you would love it as middle schoolers. I may be a bit too aged to really get into this one. show less

Received a copy of this via Netgalley.com in exchange for a review.

While not my normal reading material, this was a fascinating read for a middle-grade and near-YA readership. CLICK'D has a solid and very engaging group of characters, situations, and realistic interactions with far more depth than much of the fiction made available when I was closer to these kids in age.

I'd recommend this book for anyone wanting a good female protagonist and any interest at all in coding or other STEM related skills. Very positive portrayals of both the ups and down of technology and social media.

At CodeGirls summer camp, Allie built Click'd, a game app that helps people make real-life connections based on shared interests. Her teacher has entered her in a competition, and Allie's excited to show the app to her friends and maybe get a few more users in the week before the competition. When Click'd spreads virally through her school, Allie is thrilled. . . until a glitch manifests, and the fallout endangers one of her oldest and closest friendships. Can Allie fix everything before the competition?

This was a fun, quick read. The pacing is good, the topic is hot right now, and I kind of want Click'd to be a real thing. If you have an interest in middle-grade books featuring real-world technology, keep an eye out for this one -- it show more comes out in September. show less

This book is everything. I don't know what I refer to when I say it's everything, but trust me, it's everything. Smart girls coding, honest and learnable mistakes, realistic amounts of success, a healthy family, brilliant friendships, talk about how hard is to make and maintain friendships, supportive teachers, problem solving... GOSH! THIS BOOK! Everything, I tell you, everything. I love it.

And I just want to highlight a snippet of PERFECT text dialogue:
"Nathan: Does anyone ever call you Allie-gator?
Allie: No
Nathan: Hmm. OK
Allie: Why?
Nathan: No reason
She didn't know what to say, so she typed: You're weird."
UGH THIS WAS LITERALLY ME IN SEVENTH GRADE (ha just kidding this is still me) AND IT'S PERFECT.

A cute story with the protagonist a girl who is more interested in coding, winning prizes, and hanging out with her friends then boys. The story is timely and had nice diversity in the characters. My only complaint would be that the book feels fairly light, there is not a lot of emotional resonance, which made it a bit boring. However, the drama of the friendship app gone wrong might be enough to hold the interest of the target age range for this book, between 4th and 6th graders.

After a summer at CodeGirls summer camp, Allie is excited to debut her new app that matches people with potential friends based off the answers to a series of questions asked on the app, and sends them out in a 'scavenger hunt' like fashion to meet their friend-matches! All is going well until a week before a big competition when Allie realizes her app has a major glitch, something big enough to tank her chances of winning entirely. Reluctantly teaming up with her rival Nathan, Allie tries to find a way to fix her app, and right the wrongs it did by its users. I rate this book 4 stars because while very entertaining and well written some of the dialogue to me felt kind of cheesy and cliche, especially where Allie and Nathan are show more concerned but it wasn't enough to take away from my enjoyment of the book. I think this is a great book for a science classroom because it flips the script and shows that coding isn't a 'boys club' girls can be just as good, if not better at it, than boys! show less

Click’d is a middle grade novel about friendship and never giving up toward your goals.

This was a fun book to read. I loved the concept of having not just kids/preteens coding to help the word, but focusing on a girl coder. Allie comes up with a game to help people make friends with similar interests and will be presenting her game in a contest. When she releases the game school-wide, an issue comes up and Allie realizes that there is a problem with her code. She has to work with her nemesis, Nathan, to figure it out and fix her game before the contest that weekend.

I read this book in a day, and though it seemed a little slow at first, it picked up and I enjoyed the story very much.

This is a book I’d recommend for the middle-grade show more age group as well as anyone who enjoys this genre. I think the important thing to remember if you are reading this as a high-schooler or adult is that it is intended for those in middle grades. show less