Fake

Description

Jess has a secret. And she's not the only one. Imagine a world where your only friends are virtual, and big tech companies control access to food, healthcare and leisure. This is Jess's world. But when she turns fourteen, Jess can go to school with other children for the first time. Most of them hate the 'real' world, but Jess begins to question whether the digital world is 'perfect' after all. Back home, her sister Chloe's life-saving medication is getting ever more expensive. Determined to help, Jess risks everything by using skills forbidden in the cyber-world, only to stumble on something explosive. Something that will turn her whole world upside down. It's up to Jess to figure out exactly what is real, and what is fake - Chloe's survival depends on it.

Ele Fountain worked as an editor in children's publishing where she helped launch and nurture the careers of many prize-winning and bestselling authors. Ele's debut novel, Boy 87, won four awards and was nominated for nine more, including the Waterstones Children's Book Prize, and Lost won the 2021 Portsmouth Book Award. She lives in Hampshire with her husband and two daughters.

'Praise for Ele Fountain' - : '[Melt is] a marvellously compulsive story. The unbelievable made believable. Now there's the test of a great story' - Michael Morpurgo 'Fans of Ele Fountain, author of Boy 87 and Lost, will find plenty of white-knuckle drama in Melt' - Telegraph 'Fountain writes with verisimilitude and verve' - Observer 'Exceptional... vivid, convincing and empathetic... [Boy 87] grips us with the need to know how the heart-stopping events will turn out' - The Times