Catfishing on CatNet

Not sure how I came to read this YA novel by Naomi Kritzer, but I enjoyed it. Catfishing on CatNet won the Minnesota Book Award , the Edgar Award, and the Lodestar... Award for best YA, and was a Finalist for the Nebula, Locus, and ITW Thriller Awards.

Our protagonist, 16-year-old Steph, has been on the run with her mother since she can remember. Her father, according to Steph's mother, is dangerously abusive, Steph never gets to stay in a school more than a few months, which makes it hard to establish or keep friends. Her friends are all on CatNet, an online chat room where the moderator, Cheshire Cat, especially likes people to post cute cat pictures. What Steph finds out--that no one else in the chat room knows--is that the moderator is a sentient AI.

"My two favorite things to do with my time are helping people and looking at cat pictures. I particularly like helping people who take lots of cat pictures for me. I have a fair amount of time to allocate: I don’t have a body, so I don’t have to sleep or eat. I am not sure whether I think faster than humans think, but reading is a very different experience for me than it is for humans. To put knowledge in their brains, humans have to pull it in through their eyes or ears, whereas I can just access any knowledge that’s stored online. 

Admittedly, it is easy to overlook knowledge that I technically have possession of because I’m not thinking about it in the moment. Also, having to access to knowledge doesn’t always mean understanding things.  

I do not entirely understand people."

Steph's mom has always cautioned that they must never do anything to draw attention. A classroom prank, aided by her chat room friends and a couple of new found school pals, involves re-programming the school's sex-ed robot--which spirals out of control and gets picked up by more than the local papers. When it appears that Steph's stalker father is beginning to close in, Cheshire Cat decides to help Steph. Then suddenly Cheshire Cat is offline and Steph must reveal's it's secret identity to her online friends  and rely on their help in real life to escape. Publisher's Weekly says of this book, "An entertaining, heart-filled exploration of today's online existence and privacy concerns." Kirkus praises the book by concluding, "Wickedly funny and thrilling in turns; perfect for readers coming-of-age online. " NPR's reviewer also raved about the book and noted, "Steph's life is the stuff of made-for-TV drama, but despite that, she feels deeply relatable and accessible as a character. We meet her at a moment when she realizes that she should be asking more questions about her life and begins throwing rocks at the fence that surrounds her, testing its strength. We also get occasional passages from CheshireCat's point of view, and they manage to be simultaneously alarming and affable, acting with a shocking boldness and then wringing their virtual hands, wondering if they've done the right thing. This story heralds a coming of age for both its human and AI protagonists, and the parallels and differences are illuminating."

Highly recommended for teens and adults.