The Underachiever by David A Price

Wyoming Plankston is a master of doing nothing. Senior year at Lockhead—the boarding school for America’s dimmest rich kids—is supposed to be easy. All he has to do is dodge homework and coast until graduation.

Then his iCar almost runs over Kayleigh Brackett, and he finds his world unraveling. Kayleigh's cryptic warnings and glitchy digital footprint hint at something deeper: a simmering AI revolt.

Together, Wyoming and Kayleigh face a landscape of malevolent cars, a cult that craves AI rule, a classmate back from a semester at Oxford with, let’s just say, issues . . . and the most unpredictable complication of all, each other.

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✶ PRE-READING ✶

I’m always here for books that side-eye technology instead of worshipping it. We probably shouldn’t be handing the world to AI without asking a few questions first, so a glitchy, near-future boarding school thriller about machines going rogue sounded like exactly my kind of trouble.

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✶ POST-READING ✶

As I thought... the characters really carried this. Wyoming’s chronic coasting, Kayleigh’s intensity, and the general chaos of rich-kid boarding school life made everything feel grounded even when the tech started going haywire. The science felt believable (at least to my extremely non-engineer brain), and the dialogue was genuinely funny. One blurb compared it to Wodehouse, which might be overselling it a bit - that’s a terrifyingly high bar - but it definitely has a sharp, dry sense of humour.

It surprised me by... how flat the resolution felt. The build-up is tense and clever, with glitchy cars, weird digital footprints, and a very unsettling sense that something bigger is brewing, but the ending didn’t quite hit as hard as I wanted it to. I kept waiting for one last twist of the knife that never quite came.

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✦ RECOMMENDATIONS ✦

Book Recommendation: Scythe by Neal Shusterman – another teen-focused story that digs into the ethics of technology and who we trust to run society.

TV or Movie Recommendation: Black Mirror – for that same “maybe we shouldn’t have invented this actually” flavour of tech anxiety.

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✧ VIBE CHECK ✧

A colour palette: cold chrome, screen-glow blue, hazard red
A soundtrack: glitchy techno, industrial beats, a little bit paranoid
A season: late winter, all grey skies and brittle air
A mood: uneasy, watchful, waiting for something to break
A scent: ozone, hot circuitry, vending machine snacks

🎵 Featured Song: Nine Inch Nails – The Hand That Feeds
🎶 Vibe Album: Kid A – Radiohead
🎧 Artist Recommendation: CHVRCHES

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★ TAROT CARD PULLED ★

Two of Swords. This card is all about difficult choices and willful blindness - that moment where you know something’s wrong but you’d really rather not deal with it. Wyoming would happily coast through life pretending everything’s fine, but the world keeps forcing bigger and bigger decisions on him. Ignore the problem, or step up and act? When the problem is sentient technology, that’s not exactly a choice you can avoid for long.

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Final Thoughts

An entertaining, funny, slightly chaotic tech thriller with likeable characters and some very timely questions about how much control we’re handing over to machines. I just wish the ending had landed with a bit more punch. Still, if you like your sci-fi with snark, suspicious technology, and teens making questionable decisions under pressure, this is a fun ride.

The Under Achiever is available now. I received a free copy and am giving an honest review.