Finally Heard

I finally got around to picking this up and blew through it in one day. I loved Finally Seen, the first in this series. 

Finally Heard picks up with Lina dealing with puberty issues, as well as phone envy. She and her best friend Carla are the only two kids in their class without phones. Lina's family being poor, she doesn't want to bother her mom about puberty stuff and its added expenses. 

The entire book is basically about both kids and adults dealing with phone-related problems. The puberty stuff comes in second to all of that. Lina's mom is using Instagram videos to up her bath bomb business, with the help of Lina, Carla and Finn. The three kids even start earning money to help smaller local businesses make advertising videos. Which would have been the wise time for Lina to buy herself some of the things she wants, like deodorant or a bra. I mean, at least get the deodorant. Maybe I missed a line or two about what she was doing with the money, but deodorant also doesn't cost $14.99 like whatever she was looking at. There are plenty of cheaper options. 

So Lina's mom becomes too content-obsessed to see what Lina's going through. Lina should just talk to her mom about her body problems but instead gets hooked into the algorithm's ability to keep sending you videos about things you looked up once on a slightly-related topic. Everyone gets hooked on their videos doing well with lots of likes and comments, though that eventually slides into mean comments and cyberbullying. Even with Lina's mom. Both Carla and Finn have their own issues, too, which I'm not going to go into for the sake of spoilers. Mostly on Carla's part.

I think this book deals with a lot of important phone-related topics for both adults and kids, though I didn't like it nearly as much as Finally Seen. It was still a fun read and I'm hoping Kelly Yang continues to give us more from Lina. I like the modern world setting as much as I like the Front Desk series' older setting.