When pills literally control your life.
Capsule by Mel Torrefranca
Published July 10, 2021 by Lost Island Press
Book Length: 255 Pages
Rating of 2.5 out of 5 stars
Tagging this book as YA and fiction.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for review, this in no way impacts the following review.
"All they had to do was complete the levels. Three students from Brookwood High challenging an invisible mission together. Whether they hated each other or not, they were a team."
I wanted to love this book. I cannot express how much I wanted to LOVE this book. I remember seeing this on NetGalley, reading the blurb, and immediately thinking about Nerve (I really enjoyed both the book and movie). I was so excited for this book, and there were parts of it that I truly did enjoy, but there were also parts that I just could not dig. At all.
Little bit of backstory on this book: we begin the novel following Jackie, as she learns that two students at her school have gone missing, Peter and Kat. Shortly after she discovers a mysterious app on her phone called Capsule, which tells her that if she plays the game and gets through the levels, she can save Peter and Kat.
Okay I'm going to talk about the good first, which is basically the first 60% of this book. I thought that it started off really intriguing, I really enjoyed Jackie's character, and I enjoyed getting to meet Peter and Kat. I also really liked some of the side characters that we encounter, such as Jay (he and Jackie were definitely my favorite characters). It definitely gave me a lot of Nerve vibes which I loved. Getting to watch the trio figure out how to get to different locations and find the different capsules was a lot of fun! Plus the memories that each capsule revealed were intriguing and helped boost the story forward. I thought that the blooming friendship between the three was adorable, and I really liked their teamwork.
And then it felt like everything changed. The most drastic change being Peter and Kat. Suddenly, I really disliked them. Suddenly, they started treating Jackie like shit. Suddenly there was a romance that had not real building blocks or foreshadowing? (I still honestly have no clue how that happened). The entire ending of the story I just couldn't help but feel bad for Jackie. The first part of this book was so much fun, and then it just got so harsh and sad and not as fun. I missed the happy, fun, and adventurous vibes from the beginning of the book.
There was also another aspect of this book that really displeased me, but it does contain spoilers, so if you would like to remain spoiler free please skip this paragraph. It felt like most of the story got wrapped up. Jackie and Jay were close again, Jackie met Eugene, Peter and Kat came back, but we never really learn what happened with capsule itself. I really really wish that we learned who or what was behind capsule. Even if it was just a small hint (such as the lady at the RV telling Jackie she knew that she had a big decision to make, or even an epilogue of capsule popping up on another person's phone). It felt like capsule just kind of up and dissipated without much resolution, and that felt odd considering that the majority of this story was about capsule and finishing the game.
I think that this book had a lot of promise, and started off really really well, but those unresolved questions and just the way that Peter and Kat changed in how they viewed each other and how they treated Jackie just, they left a really bad taste in my mouth.
This review in a gif:
About the Book: Two students from Brookwood High School mysteriously go missing on the same night.
The first is Peter Moon, a heartless pescatarian who bashes students from Brookwood on his blog, turning everyone against him. The second is the adored Kat Pike, an audacious girl desperate to boost her adrenaline. Three days pass. No leads.
Indifferent to the disappearances, sixteen-year-old Jackie Mendoza remains immersed in her virtual world of video games and online friends.
When a menacing app by the name of Capsule downloads itself onto Jackie's phone, she enters a game interlaced with reality. A game threatening to erase Peter and Kat forever. Only Jackie can save them now—but Capsule is the most ruthless game she's ever played.
