Swap'd

There is a big coding camp coming up, but middle-schooler Allie Navarro doesn't have any new game since Click'd. She also wants to save money to get her best friend from Arizona to fly out to a gaming conference. Oh, and in class, there is an assignment to reuse past code for a new app.

Da-ding! It will all work together. They create an app to allow people to sell stuff so that they can make money. They whip it up quickly and it goes viral. It can even be used to help meet a boy.

They think they have just about made all the money they need when they run into issues. The computer teacher tells them they must return everything because selling things on campus is illegal. (This seemed a little far fetched. I could have seen kids taking things that are not theirs, but illegal selling and forced returns is a little crazy. There is so much that is sold at or near schools.)

There are also some boy connections, with Allie finally falling for the right boy, along with a happily-ever-after ending. It is a very "sanitized" experience in the book, that is entertaining, but could have been carried out better.

Every Last Word

A girl suffers from OCD. She is constantly imagining "dream" situations that are not "real". She has some special tricks she uses to cope. She also regularly sees a therapist.

She hangs with a group of 8 girls that she has known since kindergarten. They all tend to be very superficial valley girls. She gets along well with them and all their superficialities. However, she also is an accomplished swimmer and spends a lot of time in the pool. She feels her "summer self" is more true to herself than the self from the rest of the year.

One day she "meets" a girl near her locker and gets introduced to a secret poetry club. She struggles to fit in. She has to go through many steps (such as apologizing to the leader - a boy she and her friends teased in elementary school due to his sutter.) She is eventually accepted and falls in love with the boy. (But not until spending time obsessively stalking details of his former girlfriend.) 

She goes through many challenges and finds out the truth about the girl that she met. (She was not real, but based on a teenager that committed suicide years ago.) 

The lead character struggles with the twin challenges of dealing with a mental illness and feeling different from her friend group - all while trying to fit in. It is hard to be yourself when that may cause you to lose friends that you are attached to. It is even more challenging when your mind is forcing you down certain tracks. The professional help can be useful, but you also don't want others to know you are seeing them.

Click'd

A middle school girl goes off to a prestigious summer coding camp. There she creates an app that helps people meet each other. She hopes to qualify for a "Games for Good" contest and wants to have a little bit of usage to help demo her game. However, she decides to share it with a few friends, and soon it goes viral in the school and others.

Alas, challenges come out as the game goes viral. Some people that were friends are upset about where they are positioned on the leaderboard. There are also bugs in the app that have very negative ramification.

Meanwhile, another boy is also entering the contest. He has a building app that can help make real money for habitat for humanity. He has always been her rival. The app says they are close matches. They learn to get along and even help each other out. Alas, things don't go as well as she would like, in part due to her pride.

It is nice to see a character with the passion for software development, while still taking the time for sports. (While they play soccer, the author seems to have swimming experience also.) The app itself feels a little simplistic, but that is not as important as the acknowledgement of the impact it has on the school and other students.