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Nerve (Ryan novel)

Nerve
Author Jeanne Ryan
Country United States
Language English
Genre Young Adult Fiction
Techno-thriller
Adventure novel
Published 2012 (Dial Press)
Media type Print (hardback)
Pages 304
ISBN
OCLC 774212522

Nerve is a 2012 young adult techno-thriller by Jeanne Ryan.

Vee, a quiet junior in high school, decides to join NERVE, an online game of "truth or dare, without the truth", when she suspects her outgoing best friend and her crush are dating. Her entry, a coffee shop disaster, gains her a following, and she partners with Ian, an attractive junior from a different school with his own online following. The two perform riskier and more lucrative dares, gaining fame among the game's Watchers, until the stakes grow too high.

In the modern day United States, a new underground online game show called NERVE has been attracting the attention of both teens and adult investors alike. High schoolers across the country sign up every month to film risky dares assigned to them live for viewers to pay and watch. If selected for the live rounds of that month, players complete dares of increasing difficulty to win expensive prizes purchased with their viewer’s watching fees, to provide motivation for greater risk and celebrity style reactions to gain viewership. Some money from the Watchers also goes to hiring live videographers to follow the Players as the dares progressively get faster, riskier, and far more illegal. Hundreds of players resign from or fail to complete the dares throughout the Saturday until there are around 12 people left, then small groups are united in two different cities for that month for a few hours to complete group dares in an all-or-nothing final round. These players often get free college tuition, exotic vacations, and fame from the media.

The prologue explains the situation of Abigail, a winner from the March games (likely in Richmond) who escapes to a state park to avoid the paparazzi. Tired of fame, she fails to realize a stalker followed her into the woods, and must jump down a waterfall to avoid getting kidnapped at gunpoint by her crazed fan. Abigail is referenced several times later in the novel, but most of the characters believe she staged the trip for attention, until they realize the true horrors of the game from which she was trying to escape.

Three weeks later, the main storyline opens on the Thursday of the next NERVE weekend. The main protagonist Vee is a junior at the fictional Chinook High School in Seattle, one of the two cities hosting a finals group that Saturday. Although a fan of watching, she is very shy and is concerned with the opening night of their school’s theatre production, of which she is the stage manager. Her best friend Sydney is the beautiful female lead, whose character must kiss Vee’s crush Matthew. Sydney tells Vee of her desire to be in NERVE, but is too busy with the show and is interrupted by Matthew, who gives her flowers before the two head to a cast party. Vee prepares to head home before her 10pm curfew, but Tommy the lighting guy, who has a crush on Vee, stops her to talk. Jealous of Sydney and Matthew, Vee decides to quickly go with Tommy to a coffee shop and film an entry dare for NERVE, to show Matthew that she isn’t a pushover.


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