**I found this book at the shops several months ago, and it was finally calling my name. It was a younger book, one of the genre I haven’t read since I was little. I made my tea and sat in my favorite chair and read. I spent the next few days reading this book, a story of a young girl pursuing her favorite hobby. Once I finished, I knew I had to discuss it with someone.**

Welcome or welcome back to bookishcore! I really wanted to get back into reviews so I have another one for today. The book of the day is Click’d by Tamara Ireland Stone.

Click’d is a middle grade novel by Tamara Ireland Stone, author of the young adult book Every Last Word. The book follows twelve-year-old Allie Nevarro who developed an app over the summer at a coding camp. The app allows users to answer questions in a quiz format and then the answers are ranked against other people. These rankings allow users to find who they are most compatible with and the purpose is to help people make friends through their common interests. However, more users join and Allie discovers a glitch in the app that threatens to expose everyone’s secrets, so she has to race against the clock and work with her enemy to fix the glitch all before the coding competition at the end of the week.

Going into this book, I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it. I haven’t read much middle grade in a long time, but I wanted to make an effort to try the genre a bit more as an adult. I loved Tamara Ireland Stone’s Every Last Word, and I really enjoyed her Time Between Us duology when I read that back in 2016/2017, so I figured the book was worth a shot.

When I first started, I found the plot slow and couldn’t find myself invested in the story or the characters. I wasn’t sure if that was just because it was for a younger audience, or if I just wasn’t enjoying the book. Once I got farther in though, I started to enjoy the story more. It did take a while, but I found myself more invested in the story and interested in the coding aspect. I also loved the lesson of perseverance woven through the story as we watch Allie continuously work on her app in every spare moment. While I did not agree with some of the decisions Allie made, I think the author did a good job explaining why Allie made these decisions and thought they were for the best. Something else I really enjoyed about this book was watching Allie make all of her updates to the app, especially the ones she makes towards the end. I find that these added details really showcase Allie’s skill towards coding along with the scenes where she tirelessly scrolls through the lines of code to find the glitch. As someone who took a computer science class in school and had no clue what was going on, reading about Allie’s code and watching as she does this was very enjoyable to watch.

While the story may have started off slow, this was an enjoyable read and a solid middle grade story with elements of coding, lessons in perseverance, and a passion for the hobbies we love.

xoxo,

Just another reader