Blog Tour: The Takedown by Corrie Wang + GIVEAWAY!!!

Posted on April 19, 2017 by Regina | 1 Comment

THE TAKEDOWN, Blog Tour Digital Assets

Title: THE TAKEDOWN

Author: Corrie Wang

Pub. Date: April 11, 2017

Publisher: Freeform

Pages: 384

Formats: Hardcover, eBook

Find it: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Goodreads

Kyla Cheng doesn’t expect you to like her. For the record, she doesn’t need you to. On track to be valedictorian, she’s president of her community club, a debate team champ, plus the yummy Mackenzie Rodriguez has firmly attached himself to her hip. She and her three high-powered best friends don’t just own their senior year at their exclusive Park Slope, Brooklyn high school, they practically define the hated species Popular. Kyla’s even managed to make it through high school completely unscathed.

Until someone takes issue with this arrangement.

A week before college applications are due, a video of Kyla “doing it” with her crush-worthy English teacher is uploaded to her school’s website. It instantly goes viral, but here’s the thing: it’s not Kyla in the video. With time running out, Kyla delves into a world of hackers, haters and creepy stalkers in an attempt to do the impossible-take something off the internet-all while dealing with the fallout from her own karmic footprint. Set in near-future Brooklyn, where privacy is a bygone luxury and every perfect profile masks damning secrets, The Takedown is a stylish, propulsive, and provocative whodunit, asking who would you rely on if your tech turned against you?

Let me start off by saying that I REALLY LIKED THIS STORY. I admit that I signed up for this book because I could not resist the “hooking up with hot teacher” aspect of the plot. I was only minimally interested in the future/technology/internet aspect of the story. As a historian/librarian-in-training, I always have conflicting emotions about technology and the internet. But let me tell you, this book sucked me in like a stumbled upon episode of The Kardashians at I-can’t-sleep-so-I’m-flipping-through-channels-a.m.

Part Mean Girls, part Gossip Girl- this book was so fun and so hard to put down.

The author does an amazing job at creating the near future world in which humans have become appendages to technology and not vice versa. Humans are at the mercy of their devices in this carefully crafted story world, and there is a very creepy Big Brother vibe in the story. It gave me second thoughts about bring my cell phone with me into the restroom anymore *coughs*.

The main female character, Kyle, narrates the story with complete candidness and the kind of arrogance that you hate to love. The mix of romantic and bestie/friend drama is perfectly balanced and gave the story such a realistic current that the younger me identified with. Although the story is set in the future, it really brought back memories, LOL.

The best part of this story, besides the integrated text-speak and the nostalgic memories of 1990’s high-school films and T.V. dramas that this book ironically evoked, was the compelling mystery at the center. I did not want to put this book down. I was addicted to it like most people are addicted to their cell phones. I HAD TO KNOW WHO WAS BEHIND THE MISCHIEF. In addition to the fun and engaging plot and storyworld, I loved the diversity of the characters that Corrie Wang so vividly animated in the prep-school setting.

This book is so fitting for today’s media and technology saturated culture. It will definitely have you thinking about your relationships with your devices and how much technology has embedded itself into your existence. It will also make you think twice about who you are both in private and public spaces.

This book is a super fast and surprisingly nuanced read. FIVE STARS, hands down. Did I mention how much I love the cover and the formatting inside? FUN.

About Corrie:

Corrie Wang is passionate about libraries, road trips, and eating all the food, everywhere. Corrie grew up in Buffalo but spent her formative years in Brooklyn, where one of her last paying gigs was managing a three-story nightclub on the Lower East Side.

She currently lives in Charleston, where she and her husband Shuai Wang own and operate Short Grain food truck— named one of Bon Appetit magazine’ s Top 50 Best New Restaurants 2016 and a 2017 semi-finalist for a James Beard Award. The Takedown is Corrie’ s debut novel.

And fyi it’s pronounced Wong y’all.