Top 8

How would you like coming home from Spring Break to have your perfect social life destroyed?

If you love books about teenage drama, then this is the book for you! Madison McDonald had the perfect life; she had great friends, a new boyfriend and is starring in the school play. Though when she arrives home from the Galapagos to find her Friendverse account has been hacked, her perfect life is destroyed. How will Madison regain her friendships and find out who the hacker is?

Madison McDonald is a happy, opinionated teenager who is determined to get her life back. Madison has several close friends, Ruth, Schyler, and Lisa, but is friends with everyone, including the jocks, the theatre kids and the computer nerds. Because Madison has so many friends, many people tell her their secrets. When Madison’s Friendverse was hacked their secrets were on the internet for the entire world to see.  In the book I found Madison very  likeable, though not very trustworthy. After seeing what has happened to her Friendverse, Madison wonders who would have wanted to destroy her life so badly and wonders who her real friends are.

Top 8 is set in Putnam, Connecticut, in around 2008. The dialogue in this book was very realistic. Some writers try to make the teenagers sound older than they are, making the book very unrealistic, although this was not the case in Top 8. Katie Finn constructed well written responses that teenagers can relate to. I found it very interesting to read about how Madison reacted to some of the problems she encountered.

I enjoyed reading this book, though thought some of it was quite simplistic. The storyline was very straightforward and did not make the reader have to think. In some cases this made the book very enjoyable, though I would have liked the book to leave the reader on a few cliff hangers.  I enjoyed how Katie Finn constructed the messages Madison shared with her friends on Friendverse, which gives the readers a deeper understanding of Madison’s social life. This book was a very engaging read and I would recommend it to everyone!