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A review by jooke
Rated by Melissa Grey
4.0
Intriguing YA story that draws us an almost caricature of our modern society.
Everything is determined by "The Rating" and your rating is determined by your ancestry, grades, job, achievements, popularity... but in turn also determins your status and privileges in society. It's a vicious circle that is difficult to change. Once your rating drops below a certain point, it is very hard to ever recover from it and work yourself up to "the top".
When strange messages pop-up after a streak of vandalisme at Maplethorn High, it brings together 6 very different students with at first sight very different ratings, backgrounds, problems and goals in life. But can they put aside there differences and work out who/what is behind the messages, can they change the injustice done to one of them, how far are they willing to go to "solve the problem"....
This story started rather slow, but does show the kind of pressure our society puts on us, how most of us are guilty of judging a book by its cover, how we let shallow observations, like appearance, jobs, grades... influence our opinions of people before we even take the time to speak to them or get to know them or know what burdens or drives them... The rating system magnifies this fact and the consequences. So it was really interesting also the revealing of "who" was behind the whole ordeal. A clever plot that really impressed me.
Everything is determined by "The Rating" and your rating is determined by your ancestry, grades, job, achievements, popularity... but in turn also determins your status and privileges in society. It's a vicious circle that is difficult to change. Once your rating drops below a certain point, it is very hard to ever recover from it and work yourself up to "the top".
When strange messages pop-up after a streak of vandalisme at Maplethorn High, it brings together 6 very different students with at first sight very different ratings, backgrounds, problems and goals in life. But can they put aside there differences and work out who/what is behind the messages, can they change the injustice done to one of them, how far are they willing to go to "solve the problem"....
This story started rather slow, but does show the kind of pressure our society puts on us, how most of us are guilty of judging a book by its cover, how we let shallow observations, like appearance, jobs, grades... influence our opinions of people before we even take the time to speak to them or get to know them or know what burdens or drives them... The rating system magnifies this fact and the consequences. So it was really interesting also the revealing of "who" was behind the whole ordeal. A clever plot that really impressed me.