Linked is a book where the characters have a chapter of their own, revealing their own point of view. Every character’s storyline relates to each other. This book is written by Gordon Korman, the writer of #1 Bestselling Author of Restart.

The story takes place in a small town of Chokecherry where everyone knows each other. Michael, one of the main characters, found a swastika which is a terrible sign of hate especially for Jewish people. When this happened, many people pitied Dana who was the only Jewish girl in school, or so they thought. 

Link, one of the most popular kids in school, suddenly found out that he was Jewish and wanted to become more Jewish. He decided to ask Dana about being Jewish and he even sat with her during lunch. Dana told him about bar mitzvah, a Jewish ritual where a 13-year-old boy gets acknowledged as a Jew and gets to observe Torah’s commandments. For Link, this would be the best way to become more Jewish, so he decided to try to have one. Eventually he convinces his parents for him to have a bat mitzvah and it gets scheduled for December 4.

The swastikas kept popping up through school and Catherine, the president of 7th grade, decided to start a way to stop it. During lunch time, she was talking about having a meeting to stop the swastikas, when Link agreed. She decided to take this to her advantage. With Link’s popularity, many heard the news and came to the meeting. At the end of the meeting, basically the whole school decided to try to make 6 million paper chains to show their resistance and think about the victims of Holocaust. But, as they started, they realized that the goal would be really hard to obtain, and they even ran out of construction paper. 

The chain links gave fame to the school and even one of the most favorite Tik-Tokers, Reel Tok, came to their school. Even though many people from Chokecherry didn’t appreciate Reel Tok spreading news about their town in Tik-Tok, it attracted attention and support from other schools and areas. Some supported the school by donating construction paper and even pre-made chain links. 

One day Jordie, one of Link’s friends, was accused of being the swastika suspect by his Spanish teacher, Senora Wallace, because he had a light purple splotch on his jersey just like the color of the latest swastika. She immediately took Jordie to the principal to start the investigation. However, Jordie swears that he wasn’t the person who did it. He realizes his girlfriend, Pamela, had shoved him in the same place of the light purple splotch before he went to Spanish class. He was confused because he didn’t think that Pamela would paint the swastikas. The principal checked in Pamela’s locker to find the same purple paint that was used with the swastikas. After they found out about Pamela she was kicked out of school.

Later, Pamela admitted to painting the swastikas, but not the initial one. So who drew the first one? The investigation and the chain link kept going. Will they ever be able to find the second suspect? 

I liked this book because I got interested right away. The different perspectives gave me a variety of feelings for each character. This book was also somewhat of a mystery, which I love. I was trying to figure out who drew the swastikas throughout the whole book and got surprised in the end. 

I would recommend this book to people who love surprising endings and people who like different perspectives of different people. I would rate this book a 4.5 out of 5.

Check out Linked at Newport Beach Public Library!