Title: Wickedpedia
Author: Chris Van Etten
Genre: YA murder mystery
Book Blurb:
Cole and Greg love playing practical jokes through Wikipedia. They edit key articles and watch their classmates crash and burn giving oral reports on historical figures like Genghis Khan, the first female astronaut on Jupiter. So after the star soccer player steals Cole's girlfriend, the boys take their revenge by creating a Wikipedia page for him, an entry full of outlandish information including details about his bizarre death on the soccer field.
It's all in good fun, until the soccer player is killed in a freak accident . . . just as Cole and Greg predicted. The uneasy boys vow to leave Wikipedia alone but someone continues to edit articles about classmates dying in gruesome ways . . . and those entries start to come true as well.
To his horror, Cole soon discovers that someone has created a Wikipedia page for him, and included a date of death. He has one week to figure out who's behind the murders, or else he's set to meet a pretty grisly end.
Review:
I will never look at Wikipedia the same again. Ever. Chris Van Etten has crafted twisty murder mystery that threw me a curve ball I didn't see coming at the very end. To quickly sum up the plot: in order to get revenge on Josh and a few other students, Cole and Greg create Wikipedia pages for said enemies, including how they died. Everything's fun and games until the deaths actually start to happen in real life...and nobody seems to know who the killer is.
Cole knows nobody can ever find out about the Wiki pages he created--after all the articles were created on his account, making him the prime suspect. When he tries to delete the articles, a mysterious stranger--still signed on as Cole--reverts the pages back to their original form. And to make things worse, someone has now created a Wiki page for Cole, including how and when he would die.
As the countdown to Cole's death date begins, Cole knows he must hunt down the killer and set things straight again. The only question is: can he do it in time?
I absolutely loved the plotline...I don't know why, but the set up of the book kind of reminded me of The Future of Us. But honestly...using Wikipedia (or, as it is appropriately dubbed by Cole, "Wickedpedia") as a source of revenge gone wrong really hooked my attention.
I liked Cole. He's a hardworking student who is still reeling from his breakup form Winnie. I liked how he (usually) keeps a level head and is pragmatic when dealing with problems (unless the problem involves Winnie.) And man, the deaths. Somebody took the metaphorical deaths Cole created "(ie. "Scott Dare is an American high school student, soccer player, and Grade A moron...Fittingly he died of a swelled head" <--a and="" deaths="" div="" ego="" gruesome.="" his="" least="" literal.="" made="" nbsp="" of="" quite="" rather="" reference="" say="" some="" the="" them="" to="" were="">
The ending completely caught me off guard. It was abrupt, but it also wrapped up the lose ends. Wickedpedia was a fun, quick read--perfect if you want a murder mystery to finish before bed!
Rating:
