A powerful novel in verse. I enjoyed the rawness and reality of scams this book depicts especially for the YA demographic. I appreciated the chapter titles and music references a lot as well. I enjoyed getting to know Elliot and his family and found the characters to be realistic and well written. The book is definitely unsettling and suspenseful, and Ryan Wolf really uses the novel in verse format to his advantage and shines.

Thank you to NetGalley, Rosen Publishing Group, West 44 Books, and Ryan Wolf for the opportunity to read Total Scam in exchange for an honest review.

Total Scam is a HiLo novel written in a poetic verse style. While similar to Wolf's other HiLo novels, the reader can easily tell through the development and syntax of the writing that this particular book is written for a somewhat older teen audience. The writing is certainly still accessible for teen readers, and the content offers a significant message about personal choice and illegally making money in the world today.

The novel is told from the first-person perspective of Elliott, who met his best friend, Felix, in grade school. Felix isn't the best influence. He's into some pretty immoral hobbies; pranks are all fun and games, until they take a sinister turn. Now they approach their senior year of high school, and Felix, along with their other friend Celine, have crafted the perfect way to make money.

Celine is great with the internet and formulating fake websites. Through this, she crates a site immensely similar to a local grocery store, where people will throw their money thinking their goods will arrive at their doorstep. The scams continue, as they develop sites for more expensive fakes, like jewelry. The sites are completely wiped after a week or two. The perfect scam. For Elliott, whose family is poor due to some parental bad habits, this sounds great, but feels wrong. Elliott tried to persuade his friends to end the scam when he says, "There are more options than that...," but Felix tells him to "Stop being weak" (location 268). Not wanting to disappoint his best friends, he rolls with it, gaining the profit along with them and finding it "wild to think people made money any other way", even when he voices his better judgement against the process (location 218).

When a mysterious text comes to Elliott's phone, he finds it's time to stop the scams before they all get arrested.

There is a plethora of excellent quotes throughout this novel that offer commentary on the morality of using scams to make money. Felix, the ever-immoral best friend, explains to Elliott that "Morals are a way to keep the weak in line...So the strong can control them" (location 256). What a comment to make! Morals are a person's view of what is right versus what is wrong, and here Felix is saying that morals are a social construct invented as a control tactic. In a way, he's not wrong. How do people shape their morals and how much of morality comes from the laws of a society?
Felix continues his tirade about morals, targeting the rich when he rhetorically asks, "You think most people who are rich and powerful believe in morals...They believe in themselves. They make their own law" (location 261). This remark offers a political commentary about the rich (and I'm thinking billionaires here) in U.S. society today. How many people with loads of money can just pay away their crimes or get away with anything by paying off the right person? Felix isn't wrong, yet again. This comment shows just how much power money has.

As the scams continue and Elliott finds himself getting fed up with the wrongness of it all, he blurts, "This whole society is a total scam. We spend our lives being played by people who just want to make money off our funerals" (location 264). Once again, this is a sad revelation of society's deeper undertones. Funeral homes are making money off of people's deaths for burials and cremations. It just goes to show how the world truly does revolve around money in order for society to function. It is a harsh and brutal truth, but money matters. As demonstrated in this novel, some people will commit immoral and heinous crimes to scam people out of their money, just to make their lives easier. This reflects some of the real problems with the scams in today's world. How many people lose money to fake websites that have the illusion of looking exactly like the real one? (I remember The Broken Binding had sent an e-mail out mid 2026 to its subscribers stating that there was a fake website copying their own just as the store websites are being crafted in this novel. It can be anywhere and anything!) It just goes to show that there are people out there desperate enough for money that they will swindle others to make their own ends meet, making this novel a haunting commentary on contemporary reality. Be careful and question everything!

If you couldn't tell, I was VERY invested in this novel. I enjoyed the slightly longer length with the higher reading level, while still having it be a HiLo novel-in-verse. I found the topic very serious, but also relatable. It sends a message to teen readers who expose themselves to this warning: actions have consequences and the world can be a harsh place. As seniors in high school, it's time to see what life beyond offers and what that will look like for each individual. Hopefully schools will teach students to make good choices, but once again, everything comes down to choice, and for youth to understand the kinds of risks they are taking in the short run and what their futures look like long-term based on those choices. An excellent and exquisite novel with lessons and commentary of the harsh, but absolute realities of the world we live in today.

P.S. I appreciate the allusions to Panic at the Disco, My Chemical Romance, et. al.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher.

A solid, four and a half star read. I enjoyed this book a lot. Even though I'm not the exact demographic, I was pleasantly pleased by this one (Contains spoilers below)

Liked:
- The ease of reading. The language was simple, an easy to follow along with. I also enjoyed the structure of the book being written in verse.
- There was good description in the book, and it kept my interest throughout it.
- The song title references. Brings back memories to the mid-late 00s music.
- The mystery of who was sending the texts to freak Elliot out as a good plot device to keep me hooked. The action and the build up of it all was good. I like how it was all built up with the information we needed to know. Not too much, not too little.
- The plot twist of it being Elliot's Dad using the tracking software to send the messages, and how it showed the psychological guilt of scamming and its consequences; how Elliot realized he didn't want to be like Felix, and how they got what they deserved in the end (Celine left with the money, Felix and her broke up, Elliot and Felix fell out of being friends, Elliot working in Subby Sam's to pay back his debt).

Overall, I think this is a very relevant story for the time and it will resonate with a lot of teenagers. The story line is realistic, without being overly preachy.

Fave quote(s):
“Time was the biggest scam of all.”