Thank you to NetGalley, Rosen Publishing Group, West 44 Books, and David Aro for the opportunity to read Cheat Code: Friend in exchange for an honest review.

Cheat Code: Friend is a middle grade novel-in-verse following eleven-year-old Luca, who can't seem to get away from screens and video gaming. His dad would love nothing more than for him to play on a sports team at school. Too bad playing video games isn't a sport. Or is it?

Luca's school is starting its first ever e-sports team. Surely that will appease his dad while also allowing him to do what he loves. Luca has a talent: he basically has a photographic memory, remembering everything he reads. This leads to him being able to see patterns within video games. That's great for being on an e-sports team, but making friends isn't one of his skills. Becoming captain, he learns how friendships are made, and also how to make the hard choices, even when you don't want to lose your friends.

I thought this was a very fun novel for a contemporary middle grade audience. E-sports is a big aspect of today's culture, and many schools are picking up on it, creating e-sports teams for elective credits, playing various games like League of Legends, Rocket League, Overwatch, and Brawlhalla, to name a few (that my school has taken part in). The game Luca's school does is like a Mario Kart racing type of game, and the overall placements of each player is how the points are calculated to the teams scoring metric. The story explores father/son relationships, friendships in a technology-driven world, and leadership, making for a great set of connectable lessons for middle grade readers.

Thank you so much to West 44 books and Netgalley for the ebook to read and review.

What an absolutely incredible book for any child that is a gamer and loves playing videos games like the characters in the book do. I am not a gamer at all, so I was very surprised when I was really enjoying this book. I wasn’t sure I would understand it or enjoy it, but I was wrong I did enjoy it and I understood pretty much all that was going on within the gamer world.

I really enjoyed that the characters were all so unique and different it added so much to the story and how they played the games together, sharing and highlighting each one’s best skills. I also really enjoyed how they went from not being an actual team to finding their grove together on what the best defences were and how to get that win for the whole team.

The characters were great, the connection they built together were great and the way they progress in the event was really fascinating. I loved that our protagonist went from being a recluse not really wanting or needing friends and then making them and being a great captain.

I can honestly say I really liked this, it was easy to get into, it was on a topic I didn’t know anything about, nor that gaming is now an e-sport and can compete with other schools. It was really so informative and made it even more fascinating to read as I was learnings I never thought about before nor knew about. A really great read that I know young readers will throughly enjoy.