Click'd

by Tamara Ireland Stone

Allie Navarro can't wait to show her best friends the app she built at CodeGirls summer camp. CLICK'D pairs users based on common interests and sends them on a fun (and occasionally rule-breaking) scavenger hunt to find each other. And it's a hit. But when Allie discovers a glitch that threatens to expose everyone's secrets, she has to figure out how to make things right. Can Allie fix her app, stop it from doing any more damage, and win back the friends it hurt - all before she steps on stage to present CLICK'D to the judges at the youth coding competition?

• ISBN10: 1484799240
• ISBN13: 9781484799246
• Publish Date: 13 March 2019 (first published 7 September 2017)
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Hyperion
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 320
• Language: English

Reviews

[Kelly]

3.5 Stars
Twelve year old Allie Navarro has just returned to Mercer Middle School after spending the summer at Code Girls, creating useful applications to download. Allie has created a game called Click'd, the application matching teens with similar interests to potentially find new friends, awarding Allie with a place within the prestigious Games for Good competition. Allie refines the Click'd programming in preparation for the upcoming competition, competing against quiet achiever Nathan, an intelligent, socially recluse young man creating Built, a game with the potential to change lives through Habitat for Humanity. Click'd is downloaded and enjoyed by the student body but the application is accessing personal photo albums and making them accessible to active users, upsetting and humiliating her classmates and best friend Emma.
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Allie is a lovely young woman, intelligent and inquisitive. Only twelve years of age and having created a wonderful application that will allow others to create new friendships by being matched with like minded individuals, forgoing her summer spent with her friends to develop the game at the all girls coding initiative. Allie's genius will potentially reach a global audience of players but spends her free time troubleshooting the Click'd defects. It's in the Mercer Middle School computer room where she and nemesis Nathan begin to discover they have more in common than they both realised.

Click'd also explores the moralistic obligations Allie has towards users as sensitive information is shared and the implications of the breech of privacy. Early teens and middle grade readers will enjoy Allie's journey although mature teen and adult readers may find Allie bothersome. I admired her determination and although guided by the lovely Ms Slade, Allie valued her own newfound popularity before that of the privacy of her peers, including humiliated friend Emma.

But as all those answers passed through in her mind, she knew that none of them had anything to do with the real reason she didn’t shut it down.

She locked her eyes on Mr. Mohr and told him the truth. 'Everyone knew who I was.'

Click'd is a quick, lighthearted, entertaining read for early teens, thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Sam@WLABB]

This was a cute tale, which combined fun, friendship, and those mistakes that one is bound to make when growing up.

Allie was so proud of the app she created during her summer with the CodeGirls, and was excited to share it with her three best friends in the week leading up to the Games for Good competition. She sort of got caught up in the zeal surrounding her app, that when some issues arose with the code, she decides to NOT seek the advice of her mentor and to take care of it herself, and soon she was in a little over her head.

I really liked all the characters Stone created. They seemed very genuine and age appropriate. The way Allie approached her issues did not surprise me, because, well, she was 12. I sort of loved that Stone gave Allie those moral dilemmas to struggle with. It's all a normal part of growing up. She also took responsibility for her poor choices, and I like that Stone gave her that maturity.

I have to say, the concept for the app was fun, and I loved being in the midst of the Click'd frenzy. There were a lot of really sweet moments of friendship, and we also had an appropriate amount of parental involvement considering the age of the protagonists.

The technical side of the story brought me back to my days as a programmer. It was fun to see the kids excitement for it, and I thought that Stone used just enough jargon that it sounded sort of credible without alienated those who are not programmers.

Overall: A delightful and heartwarming tale, which I hope will inspire many to use technology to do good.

[Leah]

It’s to my eternal shame that I have never read one of Tamara Ireland Stone’s books - I own them all, I just haven’t yet managed to actually read one, until now! I loved the sound of Click’d as soon as it appeared on Netgalley - I love reading about people who can code, Ashley at Nose Graze is one of my favourite blogs because of how magical she is at creating plug-ins and themes and stuff. Click’d is a pretty special read, it makes me itch to want to learn to code, but I just know I do not have the patience for it - I couldn’t do what Allie does, when she’s trying to fix Click’d, my head would explode, I’d be incredibly angry and I’d likely just swear at it and wish it dead.

I was so impressed with Allie - and Nathan. To be twelve years old and able to build an app from scratch? Boy, is that impressive. I have mad respect for their skills, because at 12 years old I was basically prettying up my Neopets page; very, very badly, I might add. The whole concept of Click’d is absolutely brilliant. It’s basically the friend version of Tinder, and I love it. I find making friends one of the hardest things in the world, I have done since I was a teenager and my closest friend now, lives in Canada. And I’ve never actually met her in person. Sure, there are people at work I talk to, but would I consider them friends? No. Making friends is hard and it’s especially hard when everyone my age is engaged or having babies and it just feels like you’re out of the loop. So something like Click’d, that would give me like-minded friends (preferably bookish ones) with the same interests would be amazing! I would download it for sure.

Click’d is such a fast-paced read. It’s super short, just over 200 pages and has graphics in the form of the top 10 lists that get created once you click on Click’d although in ebook form they’re hard to really see and understand, so the pages really do fly by. Allie and Nathan are great characters, I liked how they started off as enemies, how Allie saw him as the bad guy, but how they came through for each other as the novel progressed. I loved the geekiness of the novel. I am all in for books about people who code, it just gives me so much admiration. It’s so easy to see Candy Crush and play it (and rage at it, if you’re as bad at it as I am) without realising all the work that must go into each and every app we use. Nathan’s Built app also sounded amazing, by the way. I love the idea of building houses and the sponsorship and helping to build *actual* houses. It goes to show that middle graders are thoughtful, they do try to help the world out a bit.

I really enjoyed Click’d. It was such a fun read and it’s title on Netgalley  hints that this is book one? So maybe this is a new series? And we’ll get more from Allie, Nathan and her friends and the Click’d app? I hope that’s true, because I’d love to see the kids grow up. Very rarely do we see middle graders become high-schoolers, and it would be so cool to follow Allie and Nathan’s progress - do they take the coding thing seriously and do it for like jobs? Do their apps go global? Y’know, there’s tons of scope and obviously, the important question, JUST HOW MUCH DO THEY LIKE EACH OTHER NOW? Even in middle grade books, I like to have a ship. This was an incredible read, I raced through it and barely paused for breath!