Jenny Han meets Silicon Valley in this drama-packed debut young adult novel about a Chinese
American teen who navigates a high-stakes coding competition sabotage and first love when
she’s invited to a summer hackathon at MIT. Sixteen-year-old Charise “Char” Tang is desperate
to ditch her dead-end small town. So when she’s invited to a highly selective hackathon at MIT
she seizes the opportunity to jet across the country spend the summer building an app and
maybe even snag the top prize—a golden ticket to a new life. When she arrives she teams up
with Khoi Astor coding wunderkind and creator of last year’s biggest mobile game. Khoi who
has soft eyes and a gentle smile. Khoi who can make anyone laugh. Khoi who is easy to fall
for…and already dating her camp roommate. If only Char could reprogram her heart to forget
about him. As the competition heats up so do things between Char and her teammate. But
sabotage lurks around every corner and she soon discovers that the glitzy tech world has a
dark dangerous underbelly.
