Scared Little Rabbits, for me, is one of those books where you say it was fine but in all honesty there are just a lot of other books that do it better.

Overall, this was a book that was easy to full into. The writing style was easy, if not entirely engaging. The characters had things to root for and the backdrop of a coding summer camp was a nice backdrop.

Beyond this though, this book lacked a lot of depth. I never felt any connection with the characters, nor was I ever particularly interested in the mystery element of the story. Sadly, this book just felt quite lackluster.

I also had some gripes with the romance. For one, there was too much. This easily could have been a tween romance with the way cheesy dialogue and very set-up situations throughout the book.

In the end, this wasn't a book for me.

When Nora is accepted to a coding camp for the summer, she doesn't expect to be drawn into searching for missing student. 

I struggled with this book if I'm being honest. I love YA and thrillers but I found myself disappointed with the ending and the twists didn't grip me enough. I will recommend it to the students I teach as I think some of them may enjoy it.

Thank you NetGalley for an advanced copy.

DNF. Thank you NetGalley and Publisher for this early copy! I decided to not keep reading this one, it was not for me. Thanks!

Hnnngggg I absolutely loved this novel. It was quick, action packed and overall, just a great read. So, what attracted me to it, you ask? I can’t remember what exactly why I requested it, but I think that maybe it was that gorgeous cover that looks like a glitching screen and a synopsis that is guaranteed to make anyone pay attention.

Now I feel like one can not fully understand how much I enjoyed this until I tell you my secret shame. Not only did I read this in a single sitting, it also involved me reading until 3am when I should have been sleeping. I literally started reading in on my Kindle, simply meaning to read a couple of chapters before bed. I was wrong and while I am now writing this while extremely tired (I had to be at work at 8), it was well and truly worth it.

So Scared Little Rabbits opens on the MC Nora  (she is one of 2 POV’s through the novel) and her friends awaiting on the confirmation of the identity of a dead body. Rewind three weeks and she is arriving at a very expensive and very exclusive summer camp at the Winthrop school. Being the outsider, Nora decides to download a virtual reality app that has been a favourite of many her age. Then her world is turned upside down when Queen Bee and coding extraordinaire Eleanor decides to make her stay a living hell after Nora’s first ‘friend’ turns out to be Eleanor’s better half. As things progress it becomes crystal clear that no one is who they seem with quite a few twists and turns thrown in.

I really loved the inclusion of the diary entries from one of the characters perspectives. They give a vague idea of how the mystery is going to unravel without giving away anything super important to the overall plot. I also really enjoyed that we got to see the whole thing from multiple points of view. I mean, who doesn’t love witnessing the scheming that goes on behind the scenes?

I honestly don’t think this novel would have been as enjoyable if it weren’t for the fast paced narrative that takes place over less than 3 weeks. There’s flirting, breakups, A LOT of sneaking around and so much tech development that it felt a little farcical but, hey, I loved it anyway.

I only had one real peeve with this novel. It is made out to be a sort of YA thriller but most of that doesn’t happen until well into the novel. Instead, its more about a bitchy rivalry and super smart rich kids which ends in tragedy. But that’s small potatoes for just how great this novel was.

Overall, all I can say is I really loved it even though I had zero expectations going in. It’s fast-paced and super well written with some very clever twists. Good for those who loved We Were Liars.

I really enjoyed reading this book! It was just such an easy read, I finished it so quickly, it was really fast paced, and the story was so compelling! Plus with the prologue being near the end of the program, well, it had me itching to find out what exactly happened! 

The whole idea of the app was pretty interesting. And I really enjoyed the fact that all of these characters were really good at coding, that we had 3 ladies who were. Sure, Maddox had talents to, but he brought beauty to the table more than coding skills, even if he was talented. At least, his role in this book wasn't focused on his skill, given that it's his relationships with Nora and Eleanor that caused a lot of drama!

We did get Eleanor's online diary entries, which was pretty interesting, given that she kept hinting at something, and I just wanted to know what was going on. And given the way that she was acting, well, when Nora became a suspect, I just wanted to know how it all worked out!  

That twist at the end, I guessed it before the characters did, and I was just on the edge of my seat, waiting to see how and when they'd figure it out. And it was all just a little sad, that if one thing hadn't have happened, all this loss wouldn't have happened. And it's just a little sad! 

Yeah, I really enjoyed this read, it was thrilling, and I really enjoyed it!

This blurb was super misleading, to say the least. A student goes missing but that doesn't even happen until the last 100 pages. Yikes. And the rabbits? Goodness, the relation of rabbits to the story and title just made me want to gag. Ugh. 
The story was original, no doubt. It created an eerie setting that strived to show the effects of cyber bullying. Really good. But ultimately, the execution fell really short. The ending was rushed, abrupt. The twist was not a good one, though. 
I loved the author's first book and was looking forward to this but it ended up being a disappointment.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for the e-ARC of Scared Little Rabbits by A.V. Geiger.

AV Geiger is a talented author who has a knack for writing YA thrillers that pull the reader in and leave them hanging until the last page! 

I really enjoyed reading about Nora, a talented high school coder, who is wrongly accused of committing a serious crime. She must figure out what's really going on behind the scenes at the prestigious Winthrop Academy in order to clear her name and to find out what happened to a missing classmate.  

Overall, Scared Little Rabbits has a great plot and relatable characters. 

Five stars for AV Geiger!

I always love the innovative stories that A.V. Geiger creates and this one is no different. By combining females in STEM, this book goes above in crafting the perfect crime mystery; one that will leave you sitting on the edge.

Scared Little Rabbits by A.V. Geiger is the story of Nora. She spent years preparing to apply to the Makers program at the prestigious Winthrop Academy and once she finally got in things couldn't have gone more differently than she had hoped for. Drama, coding, first love, and murder.

This is the first book I have ever read that starts on a cliffhanger. No, not the type you usually hear about when people discuss books, a literal cliffhanger. Well, I guess that isn't entire correct either considering the person hanging off the cliff was no longer there anymore... So we begin this story with a cliff that lost its hanger. 

Nora just arrived at Winthrop Academy to begin her summer program that she has waited years for. This prestigious program produced one of the world's most-used apps called Instalove. It is a combination of Instagram and... let's say Tinder. Nora downloads the app right before she arrives at the program so she is an entirely new user in a place where everyone has been using the app for a long time. But something else for the app is in the making and it's being tested during the duration of her summer program. It is a sort of virtual reality in a pair of glasses that also acts as your cell phone so you can send texts and call people. Nora enters the program with an idea to build something unique but somehow she gets dragged into the production of these glasses and quite possibly first love. All she has to do is fight off that first loves ex-girlfriend with the same name as her but that might prove to be easier than she thought.

This book was very interesting to me because it involved a lot of coding and computer work which I am very fond of. I think if it wasn't for the mental intrigue I would have given the book a little bit of a lower rating considering I spent the entire book yelling at Nora to be brave. I remember texting my friend who read the book a few days before me how much Nora was frustrating me. I understand that that is who she was as a character but something about week women characters just bothers me. By the end of the book, she redeemed herself so that was another saving grace.

When I saw the cover reveal floating around for this book I got so excited. Does that say A.V. Geiger?! Yes, yes it does. HECK YES! I requested this book so fast. You see, I was given the chance to review the author's previous two books and I LOVED THEM so I knew I couldn't pass up the chance to read and review her next book. While I can say that I did not love this book as much as her previous duology I did enjoy it. It was very different from her first book but her writing style and character development were all the same and that is what drew me in from the start.

In the end, this book was a fantastic new addition to the author's works. I cannot wait to see what she comes up with in the future. She will always be an auto-read author for me.

Overall, I gave the book 4/5 stars.

Scared Little Rabbits
By: A.V. Geiger

Spoilers* 

I received a free e-ARC through NetGalley from the publishers at Sourcebooks Fire. Trigger warnings: death, violence, injury, threats.

Not my cup of tea. A little slow for the promises left in the synopsis. The synopsis of this book immediately drew me in, but it ended up being a little teasing (maybe it isn't the right word) and it misleads me as a reader. Don't get me wrong the premises is spot on and the writing is good, I just couldn't seem to get past the small promises with the first interactions with the book. 

 It sounded like this was going to be a suspense novel about a missing student, but the student didn't even go missing until the last 100-ish pages. So we have to make it through 300 other pages before it feels like the book even starts. Though, with that aside, I did find each of the characters fit perfectly into a contemporary romance-thriller. 

I am going to read it again (and send a copy to a friend I know will love it) and give this book another shot!

After reading follow me back I was thrilled to get my hands on scared little rabbits.  Unfortunately this fell flat for me and I found myself bored and waiting for something thrilling to happen. Writing is good I just think it’s not a good fit for me.  Thank you for the gifted copy!

Twists and turns in this unique mystery read. It is based around an app that is used by Nora and her fellow Winthrop Academy goers. It kept me interested and ended well. Story is steady paced.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book; it's outside my usual genre and I'm glad I gave it a chance. I'm not big on thrillers or crime novels or anything remotely of that nature but I kept hearing good things about this book and the synopsis captured my attention. It's definitely full of twists and turns and kept me guessing, which I liked (hate when I solve the mystery from the get go). Definitely worth stepping out of my norm and reading something a little different. 

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for my digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was a really fun teen read! I enjoyed that it was from a different perspective than most teen books. I really liked the main characters and enjoyed that they were different. I liked reading the tech aspect for teens and thought the plot was extremely interesting. Great read overall!

While I loved the authors other books, I wasn’t able to get into this one unfortunately.  I may be willing to give it another shot in the future.

Scared Little Rabbits is the story of sixteen year-old, Nora who is accepting into a prestigious summer coding camp at Winthrop Academy. She is an introvert who is more comfortable in front of her computer than socializing with people, but is hoping this camp, with like-minded individuals, will change that. She is instantly drawn to Maddox, a young man with his own secrets. Another camper, Reese, has developed, and is beta-testing, these glasses to use with the VR game InstaLove, developed by Emerson, a Winthrop Academy alum and Reese's older brother. As one of the most promising young coders at camp, Nora is quickly brought into the Maker Faire group with Reese, and her best friend Eleanor, who just happens to be a Winthrop and Maddox's girlfriend. Interspersed throughout Nora and Maddox's points of view, are diary entries from Eleanor, who has a big secret that even her best friend does not know. While I like Geiger's writing style, I would not put this book in the thriller category. The tension does not ratchet up until almost three quarters of the way through the book. Also, Eleanor's secret, for me, was pretty easy to figure out with the clues left in her diary and her secrecy. I also did not like the insta-love between Nora and Maddox. I would understand Nora being attracted to a cute boy, but I would have liked more of a build-up, so the relationship was more believable. Overall, this was an average read, but I would not recommend for true mystery/thriller readers, perhaps for those who are looking to get into the genre.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for my digital copy in exchange for an honest review. 

This book was a little love story and a little crime thriller all rolled into one young adult novel. The main characters are Nora and Maddox and they meet at a summer "nerd" program at Winthrop Academy. Nora is an awkward girl who is still trying to grow into herself and Maddox is a boy who already has a girlfriend... Boy meets Girl, they fall in love very quickly and all Hell breaks loose. :) While it did take awhile, the suspense grabs hold of you once it does...you aren't quite sure who is the bad guy until the end because there are so many twists and turns. It felt like every single character had secrets of their own that even we don't know till the end because they did such a good job of keeping them from each other. All in all, this was a very cute but suspenseful book and I would definitely give any other books by the author a try.

Thank you Netgalley and Sourcebooks Fire for a copy of this book in exchange for a review! I’m glad to see another Geiger YA mystery and was definitely ready to gobble it up. (…because I read it in November. Thanksgiving. Got it? I’ll see myself out.) 

I always feel like I need to explain my relationship with authors, and thus nothing new here. I picked up Geiger’s first book, Follow Me Back, on a whim from Netgalley a few years ago, not knowing it was a Wattpad story. It is probably the book that made me realize I love the trope of famous person getting together with a normal person in secret. Geiger is good for a few twists and turns too. 
The synopsis given on Goodreads and Netgalley is a bit misleading though. I picked this book up thinking that murder would happen early, and the majority of this book would be spent with Nora trying to figure out what happened before everyone else did. The murder doesn’t happen until probably over 65% of the way through the book? There is a prologue showing that something bad is going to happen and NO ONE IS TO BE TRUSTED, but the set up to get to this spot is much longer than I expected. I’m not saying this is a bad thing or that I didn’t enjoy it, it’s just not the book I was quite expecting it to be. 
Nora is incredibly timid and insecure, which made me want to shake her a few times. But then again, if I had gone away during the summer as a teen to a program where everyone seems to know each other and you are definitely odd man out, I probably would have curled into a ball and hated the entire program. She finds a friend in Maddox, the guy she is crushing on. I wish she had found more friends — at least one girlfriend would have been good, but most characters that aren’t the main four are a bit blanded out. Is she the only newbie in this program? There isn’t another newbie who is also in need of some TLC? It makes the reader distrust Maddox completely, even though we get his POV too, and nothing is too nefarious in it. But still, he doesn’t try to really introduce her to anyone new, he’s her first major crush, he becomes her program partner… the isolation on top of her shyness is almost claustrophobic. 
I do love the tech in the book. I also love how Geiger has Nora think in code occasionally, which just feels real. When you’re good at something, especially solving something, trying to put uncomfortable situations and issues into those terms just makes sense. I personally try to figure out tropes of people (IT DOESN’T WORK.) Also the tech in this book feels real and fun, and something that would be coming soon and definitely be used. 
What I also love is that Geiger actually has a background in coding. She’s a STEM student, and that helped making the coding aspects of this story feel more real. The whole “write what you know” really shines here. 

Final Moments
If you’re looking for a YA mystery novel, this one isn’t a bad place to start. I also recommend her first two books, Follow Me and Tell Me No Lies. I think Geiger’s skill has definitely improved, and I am looking forward to seeing where she goes next!

Thank you NetGalley and SOURCEBOOKS Fire for this digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

Description
We stand in a tight cluster, high above the lake. One-by-one, we made our way up the narrow trail from the edge of campus. Now, we wait shoulder to shoulder behind the police tape. Nineteen summer students.

All but one.

When Nora gets accepted into her dream summer program at the prestigious Winthrop Academy, she jumps at the chance to put her coding skills to use. But then a fellow student goes missing-and the tech trail for the crime leads back to Nora. Running scared, Nora must race to clear her name and uncover the sordid truth...or she might be the next to disappear.

This is my first book by A.V. Geiger and I was pleasantly surprised at how much I truly enjoyed it. I must admit that the Virtual Reality and all the computer-nerdy-talk was basically greek to me, but I did like the murder/mystery that unfolds before our eyes. Well developed characters with a spot on narrative that kept me at the edge of my seat! It's a must read for sure!

3.5 stars. 
Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I don't read a huge amount of YA books anymore but there's something about A.V. Geiger that makes me come back. It might be a bit of a guilty pleasure but I enjoy her books because they're not overly sappy and she does write a good climax, even when the beginning of this book was just a tiny bit slow to start.
Nora is accepted into a summer program where she has to develop something new. When she's able to put her coding skills to the test, she barely hesitates but it leads to twists and turns that has the reader guessing who did it and what happened in the process. 
What I like about Geiger is that she clearly puts thought into her books. This one involved coding so while it went over my head at times, it felt authentic. Just like with the interrogations from the Follow Me Back series. She's able to write compelling characters that aren't one note. I liked Nora and you can really see her grow from beginning to end. Without meeting too many supporting characters, you get a sense of the cliques within this techy school. Every kid has a skill that is used to push forward the plot and comes to light in the climax. There's always a good amount of tension in Geiger's books that makes you want to read more and figure out what happened. This book had a twist that I barely called before it was revealed and I liked that I didn't catch it immediately.
It would be higher rated if it wasn't so slow to start and the love connection between the two main characters wasn't as strong as it could be. They worked better as partner and there was little chemistry between them. 
Overall, it's a solid book with an interesting plot that's fun to read.