This is a quick, fun book that was easy to fly through. While I did mostly enjoy myself it was a bit of a mixed bag of awesome and not so great. Let’s start with an aspect of the story that I feel is very positive and that is the representation of teen girls. The tech/coding aspect is something I haven’t come across very often, especially featuring girls. And these girls are amazing! I bow down to their skills. It’s nice to see smart, young women valued for their brains and depicted in such a progressive way. They are still judgy, backstabbing, and bitchy but I can attest that that is pretty much the truth in real life. It would have been unrealistic if they all got along and were nice to each other and a boring story too. But don’t worry, the mean girls provide all the drama you would expect.

The one aspect of this book that I didn’t like was the main character, Nora. I’m rather sick of that overused YA trope of the super clumsy, plain nerd who has faced only rejection from boys and has never been kissed and yet the handsome, most popular boy in school is instantly smitten with her, and (mild spoiler alert) within two weeks they are madly in love. It was terribly annoying and I rolled my eyes so much it hurt. That said, in the end I did quite enjoy this book. It had its positive side with an interesting, unique plot and a ton of suspense. If you can look past the cringe-worthy romance this one is worth a read!

Thank you to Sourcebooks Fire for providing an Electronic Advance Reader Copy via NetGalley for review.

Scared Little Rabbits is a slow burn. When you get to the last third of the book, you won't want to put it down!

Thank you to NetGalley for my copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

SCARED LITTLE RABBITS follows Nora (aka Eleanor, Lowercase) as she sets out on a summer camp adventure that resulted in a missing person, as we know from the beginning of the book. We then backtrack to the start of the camp to meet the characters and find out what happened.

Nora loves programming and so is very excited to be accepted into and attending the camp, which previously hosted Emerson and resulted in the creation of InstaLove, a game which combines instagram and pokemon go into an interactive game where you score points for being social with other people. Nora is pretty intimidated by the others attending, especially since it seems like they have all been there before and she is the only new one.

She immediately crushes on Maddox, whom she accidentally runs into, but it seems like he is in a relationship with Eleanor, who everyone says is the uppercase Eleanor and so they nickname her Lowercase as a result. However, Eleanor and Maddox's relationship is complex, considering the ways their families are connected and how often they fight. They break up, but then Eleanor says he has to continue to look like her boyfriend until the Maker Fair, an event which ends the camp where the inventions are examined and one is given a monetary prize.

The other main character is Reese, who basically forces everyone to beta test the changes she is making to InstaLove by wearing augmented reality glasses all the time. The book is primarily about Nora navigating the social situations with a small amount of thriller/mystery at the end when the what and then where and who are revealed.

I found the book a little difficult to push myself through, perhaps due to all the focus on Nora being awkward. The plot seemed to drag a bit due to that. I actually really enjoyed the ending sections, so I wish those had been scattered throughout to up the ante and take us back and forth with the thriller and day-to-day. I did like that we got some of Eleanor's perspective, but it would have been better to have it add a little more to the plot, it just seemed more like rambling (which is probably because it was basically her diary).

In terms of the romance, it felt very instalove (not the app) where they are immediately so into each other without really getting to know each other. The story is told from Maddox and Nora's perspectives so the reader learns about each of them, but they do not have many heart-to-hearts, if any. I prefer to have the relationship built on more of that generally, and I had a hard time really seeing it/cheering for it.

Overall, I really liked the ending, but found the lead up to not be a thrilleresque as I hoped. Please note that I received an ARC. All opinions are my own.

As this is an author I love, I had high expectations for this book. Unfortunately, they fell flat. I feel that the book was very predictable and anticlimactic.

While I liked the plot, all of the switching between regular & virtual reality plus the random lines of code inserted into the text make this a challenging read. The first few pages really caught my attention, but the rest of the book struggled to hold it. Cool concept, but the execution leaves much to be desired.

This was cute but nothing too thrilling or original. As soon as Nora opened that instalove app I inwardly groaned honestly. I already saw where this was taking us.

A 16 year old who has never been kissed is not the end of the world honestly. There’s no expiration date on this kind of thing.

All in all, this is an average young adult novel.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this copy of my ARC.

This book was on my to be read list. I was excited until I started to read it. I found the tone of the writing boring and I just could not get into this story at all. It is a shame.

Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Co. for the opportunity to read and review Scared Little Rabbits by A.V. Geiger. The novel is a quick paced read that young adults will enjoy because it centers around teens, computers, and a little romance.

I received a ARC of this title from the publisher for an honest review (thank you!)

Scared Little Rabbits- Nora (main character) is excited to be accepted into an elite summer program for Makers at Winthrop Academy. Her coding skills are through the roof, so if she could just find the right project, she'll be golden. The most promising project to come out of this program is called InstaLove, a phone app that her parents haven't let her download. But once she's at Winthrop, that's the first thing she does.

Soon, she's involved in a project with dreamy Maddox, his girlfriend, and the girlfriend's best friend. There's a lot going on behind the scenes that Nora just doesn't understand. What's left is a thrilling mix of romance, intrigue and suspense that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.

The intrigue at the end was good. It was a very slow buildup though, through the first part of the book, even though the second half of the book, it just mostly felt like mean girl bitchiness and a very mopey protagonist. I didn't love this one, but it was fine.

I would recommend this as an in-between book that is lacking in gripping hold. This book is nothing special.