Review: Nerve

Nerve by Jeanne Ryan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Switched the edition on Goodreads to the Movie-tie-in-Cover (Kindle-Version).
Hope to finish it 2016, today being December 30th, 2016. Reading this together with the Circle, an incredibly boring book, which covers some of the same problems (no privacy, paranoia, etc.) with a different premise, which sounded interesting, but the writing is so bad, I will probably never start a book by Dave Eggers again.
Both books have also been filmed so there is more to compare, I already bought Nerve as a Blu-ray, will probably try to watch Circle as cheap as possible (Netflix/Prime or a used Blu-ray).

Finished the book just minutes after Midnight December 31st, 2016.
Wanted to watch the movie after breakfast, but my Blu-ray player shows wrong region, which I will switch later and watch another movie instead.

The book is a reasonable fast read and I strongly recommend to read in a few days. As I did not, the prologue was lost on me, after I finished the book, I skimmed it again, to check the names and put it into the context. As I do not remember names too well (sometimes I am a numbers kind of guy, but mostly I just do not remember, getting old...), I thought the person in the prologue was "V" - the MC, but it was not, my bad. Also later in the book they talk about part of what happened in the prologue, but tell mostly what happened exactly after the prologue which muddled it for me.

In the book, something that sure will come to pass in a short while, the viewers are aptly called Watchers and film the tasks with their smartphones or cameras, for the chance to get credit or things they crave. This also true for participants in the NERVE-game, they do it for getting expensive things or services (like payed for education) they crave.

Recommended for the fair warning about the direction shows like Big Brother and the like might go. As I do not watch a lot current live TV, and I hate shows like "Candid Camera" -German "Verstehen sie Spass?" says it all, roughly translated as "Do you understand fun?", not my kind of show, I do not consider this kind of pranks fun and cannot laugh about that, so my answer is a firm "No" with capital "N", this confirmed my worst fears: I just see someone pick this up as a manual and develops a show like it.
Probably only money reasons and the fact that nearly everything is traceable nowadays will stop them, but other shows are not too far from it - "I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!" comes to mind, I think, as far as I know about that show.
While I can see the appeal for some viewers, even participating with voting per internet or phone, I find that whole lot absolute cringe-worthy.

That also made it a little harder for me to read this fast, I cringed the whole book, fearing for the next task. So while well written and technically correct and imho today not even a bit SF, I think all is possible, it was a little by-the numbers and gets only 4 stars from me.
Recommended and way better - as a warning - than The Circle.
As for the warning, though going in a quite different direction, I suggest ZERO (look for english translation).

Information or a comparison with the movie will be added after viewing that, hopefully today or tomorrow (wah, that would be next year...).

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