Not as good as its movie adaptation.
DARES AND NERVES
I went to the cinema theater and watch the Nerve movie, due Emma Roberts (which I love) was starring. I enjoyed a lot the film, and it was until the final credits I found out that the movie was based on a novel.
So, I went to check for it, that luckily (I supposed due the movie’s premiere) I found the book in a local bookstore and even with a tie-in cover.
The story is about an underground game called Nerve where people join it as “watchers” or “players”, in a “dare game” where the administrators defined dares to the players in change of money or valuable prizes, and the watchers are following the dares filming with their phones if the players were able to success in their dares or not.
However, soon enough the players notice that Nerve know A LOT about them, since not only they set kind of dares involving emotional stress due players’ pasts but also Nerve know exactly what kind of prizes to offer to make irresistible the temptation of accepting the dares.
Vee is the main character, she is a high schooler, usually shy and living in the shadow of her best friend, Sidney, that she is one of the most popular girls in the school. A mixture of events put Vee (that it’s amusing “not knowing” her real name in the book until almost finishing it, when in the movie is the first thing that you clearly get to know, so it wasn’t any surprise to me) to inscribe to the online game and starting some “easy” dares having as back-up to her other best friend, Tommy, but soon enough the Nerve administrators will put her as “couple” of Ian, another player, doing double dares from then on. The dares get to increase the prizes but also the complexity of the dares even put them in physical risk.
TO VEE OR NOT TO VEE
I’ll be honest and telling you that I liked far better the movie adaptation, since its rythmn is better, the dares get to be more exciting, the chemistry between Vee and Ian is more intense, and the challenge against the Nerve people is more dangerous.
However, I like some stuff that it was done in the original book that the movie didn’t, like instead of only offering money (as Charlie’s grandpa said, the money is so common that they print it everyday) but they tempt the players with stuff that Nerve knows that the players are “dying” to have (and maybe they will!). Obviously money can help you to get what you want, but if somebody knows you well, they can tempt you with material things that they aren’t just a matter of money, since they may be so exclusive or impossible to get, that even money couldn’t guarantee you to make you able to get them. Also, even it’s stuff that you could buy with money, it’s not the same effect in your brain, to be offered with money than the precise material prize that you always wanting to have.
In both versions (movie and book) Nerve organization behind the game seems to be ruthless people willing to do anything to keep the game on and not worrying to cause damage to anyone, however, while in the movie, you clearly watch the results of that, in the book you wonder how dangerous and/or powerful they really are, that along with a “third act” where you have to deal with a big bunch of characters that you are introduced until then, and therefore, you don’t care about them, all the good reading experience in the first two parts of the book is kinda get down in that third part.
So, I’d wish to give to the book a higher rate, but I think that 3 stars is fair enough, still on the safe side of a positive experience, but certainly it could manage way better the final lap of the novel.