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3.45 AVERAGE
3.45 AVERAGE
What a fun book. Five very close friends are making plans for college/work after they graduate high school. One girl gets accepted to MIT, but will not be able to go because her deadbeat dad makes too much money and disqualifies her for financial aid. The group decide to hack into the bank accounts of her father, and siphon off a few cents per dollar, in order to glean tuition money for her. What could possibly go wrong? Fun plot the relationships are great, and it keeps you wanting to read. This should be made into a movie!
This book wasn't quite what I thought it was going to be, but I still ended up enjoying it. I thought there was going to be a lot more focus on the actual crime, but this was mainly a book about friendship. As someone who loves friendship stories, I am 100% okay with that. I think my biggest complaint is that the characters themselves are very bland. They each have one thing that defines them and we don't really learn much beyond that. The writing style also wasn't my favorite. I don't know if "choppy" is quite the word I'm looking for, but the whole thing was difficult to read. It didn't have a good "flow" to it. That being said, I still enjoyed the story overall and am glad I finally picked it up - it has been on my shelf for over a year!
“[W]e’re gathered here today in the name of Family We Choose, to cement this union with the most lasting and strongest of glues, shared guilt and criminal activity.” (212)
Immoral Code follows five high school seniors as they plot to steal college tuition funds from the billionaire absentee father of one of them. I was surprised to find this a much more character-centered book than plot-centered, with most of the conflict made up of in-group arguments and discussions of ethics.
CHARACTERS
➽ Bellamy
A hundred opportunities out of reach. A thousand little indignities that come with being poor. And finally, the biggest ones, MIT and the sound of Robert Foster hearing who I was and hanging up.A scientific genius, Bellamy's dreams of attending MIT are dashed when the affluent income of her father (whom she's never met) disqualifies her from financial aid. For her, the heist is about more than just money, it's about taking what she believes she deserves from the man who abandoned her.
He wasn’t my father. He was our mark. (187)
➽ Narioka (Nari)
Was it weird to feel proud about swimming deftly, elegantly, though this sea of moral grayness? Maybe. [Bellamy] slid her arm around mine, and set her head on my shoulder. I rested my head against hers.A gifted coder, Nari turns hacktivist when she discovers her best friend's money troubles and hatches the scheme to steal from billionaire Robert Foster. Her utter conviction in the justice of their pursuit sways the rest of her friends, except for her boyfriend Keagan.
And that was [...w]hy I was proud instead of guilty. Why the reward so outweighed the risk. Robert Foster had stolen the opportunity of a lifetime from Bellamy, and I had zero qualms about stealing it back. (146)
➽ Keagan
"[J]ust because you’re scared of the consequences of doing something big doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take a chance." [...]Keagan, unambitious and sure of nothing but his love for Nari and his moral compass, feels like the odd man out when he's the only one to oppose the planned heist. Despite his misgivings, he refuses to leave his friends to their fates, and reluctantly tags along.
"Okay," I said. "But just because you can take a chance, even on something big, doesn’t mean you get to act like the consequences don’t matter." (175)
➽ Santiago
[My parents] want me to respect their wishes and their choices and their sacrifices. […]Which I understand. Their argument has its logic. My dream is impractical.Santiago harbors dreams of Olympic medals, but his parents insist he settle for attainable stability rather than reach for uncertain excellence. This heist provides him with the opportunity, not only to assist Bellamy (whom he not-so-secretly has feelings for) with her own dream, but to prove to himself that long shots can be worth the risk.
But if our story is proof of anything, it’s that impracticality is less a reason not to do something and more a reason to try harder. (205-206)
➽ Reese
Haven’t you ever wanted to do that? Just scream total, bloody murder in public? No? Well, I had.Proud aroace Reese is pretty much always up for wacky adventures and opportunities to be overly theatrical. More than that, her friends have had her back through thick and thin including sexual harassment and aphobia at school, her mother's adultery, and her parents' divorce. She'd never abandon one of them in their time of need.
So, I did.
No regrets. (220)
The chapters switch between each of the five friends' first-person POVs, but the characters' voices didn't have enough distinction to be able to readily tell whose POV I was reading without having to flip back to the front of the chapter to check. Clark's narration style is quite rambling and over-the-top at times, and a bit too self-aware as well. Although the five voices were less than distinct, I did find Nari, Bellamy, Keagan, Reese, and Santiago to be an interesting group of characters. They each have different outlooks and reasons for participating in the grand heist, and their discussions of legality and morality were quite interesting.
The first half of the book was a bit of a slog to get through, but things really picked up in the second half, in the direct lead-up to the heist, the heist itself, and the fallout. I think Immoral Code would have benefited from less switching between POVs and a less precious/quirky writing style (which could easily be a personal "it's not you, it's me" preference). However, I did find the characters, basic premise, and discussion of ethics to be interesting enough to keep me reading, and I was overall satisfied upon finishing the book. If the premise interests you, Immoral Code is definitely worth giving a shot.
This book is basically a YA retelling of Office Space. Cleaned up, of course, for the kiddos, and no red Swingline staplers.
It’s a decent book, it just isn’t what it sat out to be? I was expecting a heist book, it’s not. It’s a “teen group final semester in HS figuring out what that means book” with like a chapter of heist. Which is fine, just not want I wanted. If it’s a heist book with queer character you want, you’re better off with “Death prefers blondes” by Caleb Roering.
4 stars
I read the first 100 pages of this book when I had a few spare minutes to actually pick something up to read. And then, I read another 50 pages and fell asleep somewhere in that area (not the book’s fault–I was really tired). So take what I saw with a grain of salt, because I know that I didn’t give this book my all, unfortunately.
I’ve been so excited for Immoral Code for months now, and I feel bad that I didn’t give this my 100% while reading. So the first half was definitely “meh” for me, but I do think that should be attributed to my flaky reading schedule vs. the actual book.
I did commit to the last half of this book (by sitting down for a couple of hours when I wasn’t tired, and reading it), and I actually really enjoyed it! There was one scene that is really clear in my mind that acted as the turning point for when I went from “meh” to “ahhh, this is good stuff.”
Mainly, the (verbal) fight scene when we really got to see the characters clash was the turning point for me.
In the beginning, I was undecided on the characters (more on that later). But this specific scene, highlighting some of the underlying tensions within their friend group ended up being really enjoyable to me, and I think Clark just wrote this scene really really well?
The character tensions were really nice and well-written, and Keagan’s especially in the way it contrasted and pushed back against the other characters’ was one of my favorite parts of this book!
This might seem like a pretty sci-fi book, but it’s actually more contemporary feat. a little hacker heist instead of a more science-fiction type novel.
So don’t expect too much sweeping science and crazy technology, because this was more of a contemporary friendship/friend group book vs. a science-fictiony heist. (Which I actually didn’t mind.)
What made me dock the star was ultimately that I didn’t click with the characters, for a couple of reasons and none of which I think were too correlated with my sloppy reading.
First off, the first couple chapters felt really . . . info-dumpy? It felt like the characters were all monologuing about themselves and their friends etc., and it was kind of awkward. Although, this might have been a good thing because I actually remember all the characters’ names, which is really rare for me.
But I didn’t like how the first few chapters kind of dumped all that info about the people on us.
And then, my other issue is that their personalities and friendship felt a little forced. Sometimes it was just hard to follow because of how crazy and quick their friendship is in the way that they change topics really fast. They have inside jokes and games and I feel like some of these things were never really explained or executed with the reader in mind, but were rather just there and we were expected to know them.
The good side of all of this is that the characters do have unique voices vs. other characters in YA, although some of them did feel a little over-the-top quirky. (Mainly, Bellamy and Reese who had a sciencey and color thing going on, respectively.)
There’s a lot of positives and negatives with the characters and I think it largely depends on who is reading? So definitely check out an excerpt or something to see if you agree with their voices, because if you don’t like their voices, you won’t like this book very much.
Overall, this wasn’t a bad book. Honestly, I think Clark did a very decent job of it, and I adored the last half. I think there’s a lot of gray area of whether someone will like it or not because a lot of it hinges on how much you click with the voices Clark wrote into the story.
So, I’d definitely recommend Immoral Code to anyone who enjoys the excerpt or thinks a contemporary feat. hacking sounds interesting!
Thank you so much to Lillian Clark and the Class of 2k19 books for hosting this giveaway and sending me an ARC!
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I read the first 100 pages of this book when I had a few spare minutes to actually pick something up to read. And then, I read another 50 pages and fell asleep somewhere in that area (not the book’s fault–I was really tired). So take what I saw with a grain of salt, because I know that I didn’t give this book my all, unfortunately.
I’ve been so excited for Immoral Code for months now, and I feel bad that I didn’t give this my 100% while reading. So the first half was definitely “meh” for me, but I do think that should be attributed to my flaky reading schedule vs. the actual book.
I did commit to the last half of this book (by sitting down for a couple of hours when I wasn’t tired, and reading it), and I actually really enjoyed it! There was one scene that is really clear in my mind that acted as the turning point for when I went from “meh” to “ahhh, this is good stuff.”
Mainly, the (verbal) fight scene when we really got to see the characters clash was the turning point for me.
In the beginning, I was undecided on the characters (more on that later). But this specific scene, highlighting some of the underlying tensions within their friend group ended up being really enjoyable to me, and I think Clark just wrote this scene really really well?
The character tensions were really nice and well-written, and Keagan’s especially in the way it contrasted and pushed back against the other characters’ was one of my favorite parts of this book!
This might seem like a pretty sci-fi book, but it’s actually more contemporary feat. a little hacker heist instead of a more science-fiction type novel.
So don’t expect too much sweeping science and crazy technology, because this was more of a contemporary friendship/friend group book vs. a science-fictiony heist. (Which I actually didn’t mind.)
What made me dock the star was ultimately that I didn’t click with the characters, for a couple of reasons and none of which I think were too correlated with my sloppy reading.
First off, the first couple chapters felt really . . . info-dumpy? It felt like the characters were all monologuing about themselves and their friends etc., and it was kind of awkward. Although, this might have been a good thing because I actually remember all the characters’ names, which is really rare for me.
But I didn’t like how the first few chapters kind of dumped all that info about the people on us.
And then, my other issue is that their personalities and friendship felt a little forced. Sometimes it was just hard to follow because of how crazy and quick their friendship is in the way that they change topics really fast. They have inside jokes and games and I feel like some of these things were never really explained or executed with the reader in mind, but were rather just there and we were expected to know them.
The good side of all of this is that the characters do have unique voices vs. other characters in YA, although some of them did feel a little over-the-top quirky. (Mainly, Bellamy and Reese who had a sciencey and color thing going on, respectively.)
There’s a lot of positives and negatives with the characters and I think it largely depends on who is reading? So definitely check out an excerpt or something to see if you agree with their voices, because if you don’t like their voices, you won’t like this book very much.
Overall, this wasn’t a bad book. Honestly, I think Clark did a very decent job of it, and I adored the last half. I think there’s a lot of gray area of whether someone will like it or not because a lot of it hinges on how much you click with the voices Clark wrote into the story.
So, I’d definitely recommend Immoral Code to anyone who enjoys the excerpt or thinks a contemporary feat. hacking sounds interesting!
Thank you so much to Lillian Clark and the Class of 2k19 books for hosting this giveaway and sending me an ARC!
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It was fine. I didn't fall in love with the characters or think the plot was immensely intriguing.
Strong character development:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
adventurous
fast-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
It was cool not the best but cool, the ending really saved the book imo.