Such a bad read. So trashy, in the worst possible sense.

 

 

Vee is used to being a second banana to her best friend Syd, who stars in the school play while Vee does the stage make-up.  When she grows tired of being behind the scenes, she does a dare for an online game called Nerve.  Potential players can apply for the game and submit video of themselves performing various dares.  If chosen, contestants are given more dares, each with higher stakes and more tempting rewards.  To her surprise, Vee's clip is popular amongst the show's online audience, and she is invited to do more dares.  Soon she is paired with Ian, a boy she finds she can't resist.  Once she's been paired with Ian, the pressure to continue doing dares mounts, because his ability to keep winning coveted prizes is tied to her willingness to continue the game.  The Grand Finale ups the ante because they are grouped with several more players, and everyone becomes ineligible to win prizes if any one player in the group fails to complete the dares.  Which grow increasingly extreme and dangerous, not to mention ridiculous.

 

I listened to this book on audio, and I can't remember a time when my eyes got so much of a workout--from all the rolling.  Just--so implausible.  My willing suspension of disbelief snapped apart.  This book really wanted to tap into the Hunger Games audience, but the author seemed to miss the point that the tributes in THG had no choice but to participate.  In Nerve, players are wooed by prizes that happen to be things they really, really want (the Nerve producers research/snoop really well).  Eventually, some blackmail is used to keep players in the game.

 

In certain ways, this book reminded me of the Swedish thriller Game.  I kept thinking that at least, unlike Game, this isn't the first installment of a trilogy.  But the ending of Nerve was left suspiciously open-ended, so it's possible that this story could be dragged through two more installments.  The middle book would essentially be filler, as Vee and Ian try to track down the evil people behind the evil game.  In the third book they could finally succeed, after the evil game has gone through a couple more cycles/casts.

 

Oh, and do you hate fake flaws?  Our heroine's blue eyes are "too large" for her face.  Because no one wants to have big, blue eyes--that's just the worst.  And she is (::gasp::) a skinny girls with small breasts.  The horror!

I've owned this book for a few years now, but I never actually picked it up until I saw the movie trailer with Dave Franco. (I will always watch any movie with Dave Franco in it!) The trailer looked okay, and since books are always better than the movie, this book had to be at least decent, right?

WRONG.

Nerve is about a game called NERVE where players actually complete dares for prizes. The players are followed around on all of their dares by Watchers who pay to watch. The main characters, Ian and Vee, are paired together by NERVE to complete some dares, and they slowly begin to realize that there might be more to the game than meets the eye.

This book was just so full of meh for me. The premise was promising, and I think it could have been great if it was well executed and well-written. But it wasn't. For a game based on dares that are supposed to push the limits of the players, I think that most the dares were just kind of dumb (and the players should have realized very early on that something weird was going on). Really, Vee? You're told to go and try to sell your body for sex and you continue the game? And this is after you almost got beaten up from a previous dare. You learn at the very end when a gun is being pointed in your face that this game is crazy/dangerous? Girl, you're DUMB.

Character development was lacking, and towards the end, I didn't care about any of them. In fact, Vee and some of the other players were straight up annoying. I could've much less cared what happened to them, much less feel bad for them in the situations they were in. The so-called romance felt forced, and I didn't buy into the feelings Ian and Vee apparently had for one another AT ALL. Both Ian and Vee have some history that is hardly delved into. There are enough hints dropped that you are able to figure out what happened, but it isn't fleshed out at all. And that is CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. In Nerve, there was none. When you have a story with literally just plot and action, and the plot is weak, the book is just not good.

Another thing that bothered me was that there was no real conclusion to the story. As if this book were good enough to possibly warrant a squeal or something... please. In the prologue, Vee runs out of her house trying to escape someone/something and WE NEVER FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS. And this is in the very beginning! So many loose ends at the conclusion, and it was so frustrating. When Ian and Vee also 'escape' the game, little to nothing happens even after having been threatened about consequences throughout the course of the story. Then, Ryan tries to leave things suspenseful at the end with Vee's phone going off with a weird ringtone? STOP. Just STOP. This just ends up being another thing thing left without closure.

I might check out the movie now since Nerve might end up being a better movie adaptation. Plus, maybe the writers worked on actually putting some personality into the characters, and I know from the trailer some of the dares are very different. And it has Dave Franco. I won't get my hopes up, but it'll be hard for the movie to be worse than the book. It actually hurts my book heart to think that...

Ich schaffe es einfach nicht dieses Buch fertig zu lesen und breche es nach 173 Seiten ab.

Es ist noch nicht mal der Fakt, dass es am Anfang mega unangenehm für mich war eine Protagonistin zu haben, die Vee heißt, Steinbock ist und in einem Theater arbeitet (was auf mich auch alles zutrifft (bis auf, dass ich eben nicht nur in einer Theater-AG bin, sondern damit richtig Geld verdiene btw), sondern dieses nicht nachvollziehen der Handlung.
Ich konnte es zwar noch verstehen, warum die Protagonistin bei dem Spiel "Risk" mitmachen wollte, aber sobald sie ihren Partner Ian getroffen hat, ergab irgendwie gar nichts mehr Sinn. Es wurde immer wieder mal betont, was doch für ein schlimmes Geheimnis die Prota hatte, sie es aber einfach nicht sagen konnte oder Ian überhaupt irgendetwas anvertrauen, dafür aber ihm quasi alles erzählen warum die Challenge mit ihrer Freundin Syd so schwer für sie ist. (Okay, jetzt wo ich es hier noch einmal aufschreibe klingt es nur halb so schlimm, aber beim Lesen kriege ich einfach nur die Krätze, wenn ich einen Satz von dieser Prota lese und es liegt mittlerweile nicht mehr nur an den gleichen Namen.)

Ansonsten kann ich nur sagen, dass man schnell und leicht in die Handlung reinkommt, denn der Schreibstil ist einfach gehalten. Ich habe auch etwas Spannung zwischendurch gefühlt, die mir echt nahe ging, aber als sich das alles für mich in eine Art verwöhntes Kindergartenzeug gewandelt hat, war es vorbei mit der Spannung.

Ich hab erst später im Netz gesehen, dass das die Vorlage zum Film "Nerve" ist und ... der Film kann nur besser werden, obwohl ich das auch irgendwie bezweifle. Anschauen werde ich ihn mir nicht. Das Thema zu dieser Storyline ist für mich hiermit abgehakt.

Charisma took a while to get going. It didn't really engage me until about a third of the way through. I think the main reason for this was that a bit too much time was spent on Aislyn's crippling shyness. Now, this shyness is integral to the story the book is telling, however, I think the point would have been made quite adequately in fewer scenes. It's never easy to read chapter after chapter from the point of view of a person who is constantly down on herself and failing (in her eyes) in everything.
However, after that, it came into its stride and the story was an entertaining and thought-provoking one. Cases are presented both for and against gene therapy, with a clear message of 'make sure it's done correctly if you're going to introduce it' coming through. I liked the issues it raised, and also that the characters were realistic ones. No one was perfect, not by a long shot, but I empathised with Aislyn and enjoyed following her journey.