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A review by riotbatgrrl
Deepfake by Sarah Darer Littman
The basic idea for this book is solid: at a high school where everyone cares about academics, a video spreads of the school's top student saying that her boyfriend, who's also her biggest competition for valedictorian, paid someone else to take the SAT for him... except, she never said that. Now he's being investigated by the College Board, and she needs to clear her name in order to clear his. With the proliferation of deepfake apps, this is a very timely story; most of the apps are limited to entertainment purposes (i.e., putting yourself in the lead role in your favorite movie or TV show), but the fact is that you can fabricate realistic video of anyone saying anything as long as you have a picture and an audio clip of their voice. This is TERRIFYING, so it's perfect fodder for a YA mystery. And, for the most part, Deepfake does a decent job with the concept. The characters aren't awful, the pacing wasn't weird, and the mystery has a second layer that doesn't come out of nowhere. My problems with this book are more in the realm of suspension of disbelief and the convenience of the plot. I'm going to do my best to mark spoilers but I might miss some, so here's a general spoiler warning for the rest of this review.
First off, why do all these high schools in YA books have gossip sites and apps dedicated to the students at their school? Like, not just a school gossip Snapchat or something but a literal app or website that some student built specifically to ~expose~ their peers and I just... is this a thing that happens in real life?? I mean, obviously cyberbullying is a real thing that's really bad, and obviously people use social media to spread damaging rumors, but this Gossip Girl level thing where there's one person who knows everything about everyone and posts it all online and no one else knows who they are... it never strikes me as realistic. And this book's Gossip Girl (Rumor Has It) was weirdly focused on the valedictorian thing? The culture at some schools is definitely more academic than others, but I really have a hard time buying that the entire school cares this much about who's the valedictorian. However, I actually really liked that Rumor Has It didn't know that Dara and Will were dating right away; that was significantly more realistic than most of the school gossip books. I did not, however, buy that Dara and Will were able to hide it for five months, and their reasoning behind hiding their relationship was very weird -- like, even for a school that cares too much about the valedictorian thing, I have a hard time believing that the student body would be so invested that the entire school would care that the front-runner and the runner-up are dating. I don't know, maybe this read so oddly to me because it all feels like convenient setup for the plot rather than realistic, grounded things that would actually happen. Like, the only reason Will and Dara hid their relationship is soMJ would have a reason to be mad enough to create the deepfake video that splits them up , and the only reason Rumor Has It focuses on the valedictorian race is to make it plausible that the video spread as fast as it did. The way the mystery of who's behind Rumor Has It is solved was ALSO weird and convenient: Carly left the library last, so it has to be her! Someone else could have easily uploaded the video to Rumor Has It while Carly was still in the library, or like maybe the person who downloaded the video wasn't the person behind Rumor Has It and just emailed it to them. The order in which people left the library has literally nothing to do with who's behind the stupid gossip site. Also, like, who would even REMEMBER who else was in the library at that specific time on that specific day??? It's just bizarre.
The video itself bothered me, too. I don't know how long this book was in development, but in 2020 I would expect that smart, tech-oriented people (such as all of the main characters) would already know that it's possible to fake both video and audio in a realistic manner. Like, this would have to be set in 2016 for me to buy that Will's first reaction to Dara saying the video isn't real is to tell her she's lying. Even if high school kids don't pay attention to current events, there's literally an app for that now. That one deepfake video of Obama with Jordan Peele's voice was made in, what, 2018? I just don't believe that literally no one had heard of this concept. Also, I hated the two talking-to-the-audience explanations of what a deepfake is. Bleh.MJ being the one who made the video was predictable and her reasoning was kind of.... not super believable? I guess I would have bought it more if it was a decision she made when she was really upset about not getting into Carnegie Mellon and everyone else getting into their dream school with the intention of sabotaging Will's Stanford acceptance (like maybe even because she knew he didn't really want to go there???) and then changing her mind because she realized it was a really messed up thing to do. But she was mad at him for hiding his relationship, and I just feel like making a video accusing your bestie of academic misconduct is not a normal response to feeling betrayed. Also, the whole uploading to a private YouTube channel which she then left logged in on a computer in the school library was just very convenient. Why would you not just put the video on your phone if you wanted to watch it to cheer yourself up? It would be so much easier!
First off, why do all these high schools in YA books have gossip sites and apps dedicated to the students at their school? Like, not just a school gossip Snapchat or something but a literal app or website that some student built specifically to ~expose~ their peers and I just... is this a thing that happens in real life?? I mean, obviously cyberbullying is a real thing that's really bad, and obviously people use social media to spread damaging rumors, but this Gossip Girl level thing where there's one person who knows everything about everyone and posts it all online and no one else knows who they are... it never strikes me as realistic. And this book's Gossip Girl (Rumor Has It) was weirdly focused on the valedictorian thing? The culture at some schools is definitely more academic than others, but I really have a hard time buying that the entire school cares this much about who's the valedictorian. However, I actually really liked that Rumor Has It didn't know that Dara and Will were dating right away; that was significantly more realistic than most of the school gossip books. I did not, however, buy that Dara and Will were able to hide it for five months, and their reasoning behind hiding their relationship was very weird -- like, even for a school that cares too much about the valedictorian thing, I have a hard time believing that the student body would be so invested that the entire school would care that the front-runner and the runner-up are dating. I don't know, maybe this read so oddly to me because it all feels like convenient setup for the plot rather than realistic, grounded things that would actually happen. Like, the only reason Will and Dara hid their relationship is so
The video itself bothered me, too. I don't know how long this book was in development, but in 2020 I would expect that smart, tech-oriented people (such as all of the main characters) would already know that it's possible to fake both video and audio in a realistic manner. Like, this would have to be set in 2016 for me to buy that Will's first reaction to Dara saying the video isn't real is to tell her she's lying. Even if high school kids don't pay attention to current events, there's literally an app for that now. That one deepfake video of Obama with Jordan Peele's voice was made in, what, 2018? I just don't believe that literally no one had heard of this concept. Also, I hated the two talking-to-the-audience explanations of what a deepfake is. Bleh.