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.
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.