THE HIVE

Trial and punishment are carried out via a social media process called the Hive in this futuristic thriller created by a team that includes an actress, a film producer, and two writers.

The daughter of a famous hacker, high school senior Cassie is still grieving her dad’s recent death. Her mother, a classics professor named Rachel, is struggling both to make ends meet and with the ongoing presence of National Security Agency agents who keep nosing around her late husband’s doings. Alternating between Cassie’s and her mother’s third-person narration, the difficult relationship between the pair provides a believable emotional backbone for this high-concept, fast-paced, sometimes overly detailed cautionary tale of the morally fraught territory that results when technology and mob mentality mix. After Cassie makes a tasteless joke online about the new grandchild of the president (a figure who is so obviously Trump that the pretense of his name being fictionalized seems pointless), she must flee the ensuing violent wrath of the Hive, discovering its secrets along the way. Readers may be frustrated by the intelligent and sarcastic Cassie’s apparent inability to identify people who are clearly likely to betray her. Cassie is biracial—her mother is white, and her dad was black—and the secondary characters are realistically diverse.

Energetic but at times heavy-handed, this dystopian tale seems destined for a screen adaptation.