Welcome back to Book Break! In this video I'm going to recommend you a bunch of thrillers
about the internet. Some people say that phones and the internet are ruining storytelling but I
actually think it's the opposite. So many new plots have now been made possible,
particularly when it comes to thrillers, there are just so many internet horror stories out there. So
I'm going to recommend a few of my favourites, but do recommend us some more of your own in
the comments and let's dive in! So the first book I've got here is People Like Her by Ellery
Lloyd which is such a fun scary page-turning thriller. We get three perspectives in this book:
Emmy Jackson who is a very successful mummy blogger, her husband Dan, and a third
perspective - we don't know this person's name, we just know that they are watching Emmy and they
know a secret from her past. I absolutely could not put this book down, it is very scary and tense
and it's also just fascinating for anyone who is involved in the world of social media, seeing
how fake it can all be, but not always in the way you'd expect. Then I've got Connect by
Julian Gough. So this is about a mother with a teenage son who is this incredible coder,
he can create entire virtual realities. She, the mother, is a biologist who is conducting her own
pretty groundbreaking research which she's actually seriously worried could significantly
change the world. And then her son hacks in and sends her research to a biotechnology conference
and suddenly it all comes crashing down. The US government want her research and
they also want her son. Kiss Me First by Lottie Mogach is about stolen identity. So
this is about a teenager called Leila who spends more time online than she does in her real life,
and then she becomes involved in this internet forum where she's asked to take on Project Tess,
taking on this woman that she's never met’s entire online identity. So that is very creepy.
This has been described in Glamour as the first coming-of-age novel for the internet generation.
Then there's Ripper by Isabel Allende, an author not usually known for her mysteries, but this
one is about a teenage girl who is addicted to crime novels and an online detective game called
Ripper - until a series of crimes in her own city makes her turn her sleuthing skills to real life.
And then her mother goes missing . . . So this one isn't a scary thriller, it's actually a very fun
read, but it is about the internet and it is a mystery. #murdertrending by Gretchen Mcneill
is a really fun fast-paced thriller set in a prison that is being live streamed to millions
of viewers, so it's turned justice into a reality show game where inmates are chased through the
prison and executed by different assassins depending on what the viewers at home are
voting for. So that's scary stuff1 It’s a lot of fun, I've actually got here #noescape which is a
prequel - it's a really fun franchise but also quite a scary vision of what our current online
mob justice could turn into. Which brings me to my next book The Circle by Dave Eggers. This is
about a young woman starting a new job at this massive internet company that has just taken over
so many aspects of people's lives, and we watch her getting slowly sucked into this company's
ethos that everything should be shared and that privacy is in fact theft. For a political tech
thriller you could read Infomocracy by Malka Ann Alder. So this one is about a search engine called
The Information which has essentially developed a totally new form of government. It's replaced all
semblance of different nations, or anything we're familiar with now, with microdemocracies, and then
the party with the largest overall majority is called the supermajority and essentially achieves
world domination. Ever since this new system came into place there has been world peace,
but at what cost? This book takes place during the build up to the next election,
and it's all about The Information and the power that they have in influencing the election - so
pretty relevant stuff. You've probably already heard of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. This is
set in the future in 2044 inside a virtual utopia called the Oasis. Our main character is a teenage
boy called Wade who spends his days solving puzzles inside the Oasis, and these puzzles
are based on pop culture from the 80s and 90s. But this game gets fiercely competitive - in fact
there are players who are even willing to kill to win. For something a bit more scarily real,
The Takedown by Corey Wang is about a teenage girl called Kyla who is very popular, very successful
at school, she's on track to graduate high school with some great college offers, and then a sex
tape of her goes viral online. But it's not really her in the video. Someone has edited it to make it
look like it is. So Kyla ends up getting sucked into this whole world of hackers and stalkers
to find out who's at the bottom of this. Then for a book that I read years ago, back in 2002
I think so it's quite an early warning about the internet, and that was the book To Die For
by Catherine Jinks. So this one was written in the format of internet message boards and it was about
a 12 year old girl who is completely obsessed with an old TV star, so she joins this internet forum
and inadvertently starts this terrifying search to track him down. And I remember loving this one as
a child who hadn't at that point spent much time on the internet so it seemed like a very scary
stuff. And then before I finish, just one more to mention to look out for because it's coming
out next year and that is Rabbits by Terry Miles. So this one is based on the podcast, you may have
listened to, Rabbits - and it's about an alternate reality game where even the rewards for winning
are unclear. And the tagline is “play the game if you dare” so I cannot wait to get my hands on this
one. So as always do leave your recommendations in the comments below for thrillers that you
have loved about the internet and I will leave a playlist here of all of our videos about thrillers
of all different genres. So do click through and have a browse and we'll see you next time!