Knowing that it\u2019s wrong but attracted by the excitement of big, easy bucks, 17-year-old Ohioan Elliott allows himself to be drawn into the schemes of his troubled longtime friend, Felix Thurman. Felix, who struggles with his disengaged adoptive parents, has a new girlfriend, \u201ctech goddess\u201d C\u00e9line Moreau, whose dad \u201cwent to prison \/ for some credit card scam thing.\u201d Elliott deals with his own tensions at home\u2014his father is unemployed, and his mother works retail and has a multilevel marketing side gig. C\u00e9line provides the gear and know-how for the trio to set up a series of bogus online product offers, charities, and websites. Then mysterious texts\u2014\u201cI know who you are,\u201d \u201cI know what you\u2019re doing, buddy\u201d\u2014and extortion demands appear, followed by an incident that leaves Felix beaten and bloody, and a devastating discovery. Repentant 12th grader Elliott is left to reflect on friendship and the kind of person he wants to be, aware that for every Felix in the world, there are \u201cfriends like me \/ who tag along.\u201d This work for striving readers balances narrator Elliott\u2019s introspective musings with a fast pace and a clearly stated message about the immorality of scammers. Although not everyone is redeemed by the end, the story does end on a positive note of hope and redemption for Elliott. The cast presents white. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Knowing that it\u2019s wrong but attracted by the excitement of big, easy bucks, 17-year-old Ohioan Elliott allows himself to be drawn into the schemes of his troubled longtime friend, Felix Thurman. Felix, who struggles with his disengaged adoptive parents, has a new girlfriend, \u201ctech goddess\u201d C\u00e9line Moreau, whose dad \u201cwent to prison \/ for some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7427"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}