Bubble World by Carol Snow

From Goodreads,

"Freesia's life is perfect. She lives on the beautiful tropical island of Agalinas, surrounded by idyllic weather, fancy dress shops, and peacocks who sing her favorite song to wake her up in the morning. She has so many outfits she could wear a different one every day for a year and not run out.

Lately things on the island may have been a bit flippy: sudden blackouts, students disappearing, even Freesia's reflection looking slightly . . . off. But in Freesia's experience, it's better not to think about things like that too much.

Unfortunately for her, these signs are more than random blips in the universe. In Bubble World by Carol Snow, Freesia's perfect bubble is about to pop."

Goodreads - Bubble World

Freesia lives in a world where everything is perfect.  She looks perfect, her friends are perfect, the island she lives on has perfect weather.  Freesia lives in Bubble World, a place where she goes to cultural immersion class and goes to her make up classes.  Everything is exactly as it should be until blackouts start happening and she suddenly wakes up.  She soon realizes she has been living in a virtual reality world and she is nowhere near being perfect.  Slowly Freesia realizes the truth behind everything and she is left with the decision to choose between the two worlds.

When I started this book I was sure it was going to be awful.  Bubble World had a language of its own and it made all the characters seem annoying, immature, and shallow.  I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to make it through the book.  After a few chapters I really started to getting into the book and continued to wonder where it was headed.  I really enjoyed the utopian setting with this book.  It seems that a lot of books written these days are more dystopian themed.  This book was set in a perfect world where everything was exactly as it should be.  The weather, the water, the food and drinks, the clothes, and even the people were... perfect.  While perfect gets old, it was interesting to read a book that wasn't about the world ending or about how the government has destroyed us.

Even though I enjoyed the utopian setting, this book had lots of downfalls.  There was a lot of potential for this book to address some big issues, but all the messages kind of fizzled out.  First on my list of problems is Freesia and her parents.  I just want to know what kind of parents are okay with signing their child up to participate in a virtual reality school.  Freesia sounded like she was a difficult kid who was awkward and found it hard to make friends.  (We later find out that her best friend betrayed her to be friends with another girl.)  I felt like Freesia's parents enrolled her in Bubble World so they wouldn't have to put up with her emotional, friendless state.  In the book they stated that they enrolled her because they thought it was best for her, but I feel like they enrolled her because they were tired of dealing with her.  I feel like it would have been easier to homeschool her than sign her up for an education program where you really didn't know what your child was seeing, doing, or learning.  I just felt like the whole, "signing my kid up for a virtual reality world" was kind of far fetched.

This leads to my next point concerning the message that big corporations are corrupt.  Part of the reason Freesia's parents agreed to Bubble World was because Freesia's mother would get a job out of the whole deal by posting vlogs about Freesia in Bubble World.  Todd, the creator of Bubble World, convinced Freesia's parents to support Bubble World.  As the book progressed we find out that Todd wasn't really in the business to create geniuses, but to really just make money (shocking).  I definitely felt like there was a message about corporations being corrupt and that we should stop buying into them.  But the message never really progressed or turned into a big turning point in the book.  Freesia's parents still allowed her to go back to Bubble World even though the corporation was obviously corrupt.

This book was definitely different than any other book I've read.  I recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a book that has the virtual reality technology theme.  I give this book 4 out of 5 stars.