#Scandal by Sarah Ocklar {POCKET REVIEW}

Lucy’s learned some important lessons from tabloid darling Jayla Heart’s all-too-public blunders: Avoid the spotlight, don’t feed the Internet trolls, and keep your secrets secret. The policy has served Lucy well all through high school, so when her best friend Ellie gets sick before prom and begs her to step in as Cole’s date, she accepts with a smile, silencing about ten different reservations. Like the one where she’d rather stay home shredding online zombies. And the one where she hates playing dress-up. And especially the one where she’s been secretly in love with Cole since the dawn of time.

When Cole surprises her at the after party with a kiss under the stars, it’s everything Lucy has ever dreamed of… and the biggest BFF deal-breaker ever. Despite Cole’s lingering sweetness, Lucy knows they’ll have to ’fess up to Ellie. But before they get the chance, Lucy’s own Facebook profile mysteriously explodes with compromising pics of her and Cole, along with tons of other students’ party indiscretions. Tagged. Liked. And furiously viral.

By Monday morning, Lucy’s been branded a slut, a backstabber, and a narc, mired in a tabloid-worthy scandal just weeks before graduation.

Lucy’s been battling undead masses online long enough to know there’s only one way to survive a disaster of this magnitude: Stand up and fight. Game plan? Uncover and expose the Facebook hacker, win back her best friend’s trust, and graduate with a clean slate.

There’s just one snag—Cole. Turns out Lucy’s not the only one who’s been harboring unrequited love...

Book Title: #Scandal
Author: Sarah Ocklar
Genre: Young Adult, Chick Lit, Romance
Publication Date: June 17th 2014

                                   by Simon Pulse

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Review:

#Scandal. Never underestimate the power of a hashtag! :-P

As a chick lit, it is really a good read. It is wonderful in the sense that it addresses a very sensitive issue of today's world. Social networking. While you can supposedly 'stay connected', most often then not it becomes a little too much. This becomes a weapon, a tool to serve individual's personal and selfish motives.
And knowingly or unknowingly, deserving or undeserving, the other end becomes the helpless victim. Lucy is the latter, winding up in a #scandal, that is mostly made up. But who's done it? Nobody knows. And that's what Lucy is trying to find out. But the virtual world where providing an identity or a face isn't a necessity most often, things aren't looking up for her.

Lucy, Cole, Asher, Jayla each of the characters do enough justice to make them likeable. He honestly though, I would've liked a little stronger and prominent Cole. But my sole attention was on the storyline, the actual plot regarding the scandal to divert elsewhere. But yes, there was room for improvement, definitely. All the characters, even Lucy to some extent, needed a wee bit more characterization. The book ended with a very nice note, but I couldn't shake the feeling that something was amiss. Still, I would recommend it whoever likes a chick lit with a serious message to convey (specifically those who liked The S Word by Chelsea Pitcher even though it's not one of my favorites).

BUY THE BOOK