Warcross by Marie Lu

Cover Art Courtesy of Goodreads

I have been in such a streak of great books lately! This one was definitely no exception. Warcross by Marie Lu follows Emika Chen, a teenager who is used to making her living as a bounty hunter capturing wanted gamblers. But one day, her tech-savvy personality goes too far and she hacks into the championship game of Warcross, a virtual reality game that has taken over the world using augmented reality glasses to transform everything around you. 

This attracts the attention of Hideo Tanaka, the young techie who created the world of Warcross, and he flies her to Tokyo to assist in hunting down a hacker who appears to be tampering with the game. As Emika plays undercover as a member of one of the Warcross championship teams, she gets in deeper than she might have expected, with both Hideo and her assignment. Soon things start to escalate as lives are at stake and suspicion abounds. Does the mysterious hacker win and execute his plan? Is everyone safe? And are people's motives really what they seem?

Without any spoilers, I can say that this book was fantastic and definitely took an interesting turn! It was full of action, and even a little romance, and was thrilling from the first page to the last. The visuals that Marie Lu created through her writing were fascinating, and I keep picturing an amazing neon universe with unrivaled technology and creativity, and I just want to be a part of it! I've never read anything by Marie Lu, but based on this book I just want to go devour everything she's ever written! I've heard this is similar to Ready, Player One by Ernest Cline, but since I have yet to read that I can't really comment.

Warcross really made me want to be a badass like Emika, and it definitely made me more curious about technology. I can tell this will be a book that sticks with me for a while, which is always my favorite type of book! Warcross by Marie Lu hits shelves on September 12th!

Overall Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars

An e-copy of this book was provided to me by Edelweiss+ and G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers in exchange for an honest review, but this book really was 5 stars-awesome!