Candor

The book Candor is centered on a city with subliminal messages. The subliminal messages are contained in music, which plays all over the streets. The subliminal messages tell kids to do the homework, obey their parents, and eat healthy, which makes Candor a perfect, model town.

Oscar Banks is the perfect role model, who all the kids look up to. But Oscar is the only one who can get kids out of Candor before their changed by the messages and he is the only one who can resist them.

When a new girl, Nia, comes to town, Oscar is intrigued by her, and finds himself falling for her. He has to juggle being perfect, getting kids out of Candor, and dating Nia all at the same time. Evidence suggesting that Oscar is bad accumulates, and Oscar has to choose whether to keep Nia here in Candor and risk his safety or to get Nia out of Candor and forever lament her departure.

So far, in the book, this is what has happened:

Nia comes to town. Oscar steps outside to meet her. He mocks him that he is so perfect, and the messages pound on Oscar’s brain to go back to do his homework. To resist the messages and prove Nia wrong, he takes her graffiti can and sprays graffiti all over a building wall- an enormous crime in Candor.

Teens Against Graffiti (TAG) is assembled to find the person who sprayed graffiti over the wall. Oscar’s life is put in danger. So that no one suspects him, he has to elevate his game of being perfect, committing himself to many other activities such as chess club and running for class president. Those activities swallow all his time, preventing him from talking to Nia, and convincing her not to confess to TAG that he did it.

Nia says she won’t, but Oscar is unsure. Once the messages claim her, she won’t be able to lie or hide anything. Oscar devises his own music, that is steeped in subliminal messages telling her to resist the other messages and to not tell and forget the graffiti incident.

All goes well for Oscar for a while, until his life again is plunged in danger. His client, Sherman, who he will send out of Candor goes to get picked up three days earlier than the original departure time. He left a note to his parents informing them that he was leaving, so he can’t go back to his house. He stays in the woods, furnished with several protein bars.

However, Sherman is caught. Oscar worries that he will spill the beans to authorities. But Sherman stays loyal. The only thing he does is steal Oscar’s girlfriend, Mandi. Mandi was someone only to augment Oscar’s image of being perfect. And now that she’s gone, Nia and him can start dating, which puts Oscar’s image in danger.

I like the book so far. Every chapter welled over with suspense, and it was very gripping. The only part I didn’t like about the book was that after Oscar and Nia started dating, the book kind of hovered toward the romance genre, which I didn’t enjoy whatsoever.