I received this book for free from Reviewer Purchase in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

This Is Not the Real World by Anna Carey
Series: This Is Not the Jess Show #2
Published by Quirk Books on 5/24/22
Genres: Dystopian, Mystery & Detective, Science Fiction, Thrillers, Young Adult
Pages: 288
Format: Ebook
Source: Reviewer Purchase
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Months after Jess escaped from the set of Stuck in the ’90s, the nostalgic reality show she believed was her real life, the teen star is getting to know the outside world for the first time. But she can’t outrun her fictional life forever—or the media empire that owns it.

After Like-Life Productions tracks her down and forces her boyfriend to return to the show, Jess teams up with an underground network fighting to uncover Like-Life’s schemes. To expose the truth, Jess must go back to the set and take Like-Life down from the inside . . . but getting revenge might just cost her everything.

Short and Sweet Review

Jess and Kipp have been in hiding for months, but Life Like Productions (LLP) have finally tracked them down and force Kipp to return to Swickley to finish out the rest of his contract. Jess knows that she needs to go back for Kipp, but she’s also helping Beyond1998 a group that is trying to expose LLP for who they really are and they need someone on the inside to get the intel. Even though Jess used to be the star of the show her return isn’t the welcome home she thought it would be and some people are really out to get her.

I felt bad that Jess and Kipp were thrown back into a life that they tried so hard to leave and now they’re back on set and you can tell that people are treating them like they’re less than. Anyway the other actors on set are not right, they think what they’re doing is right and they basically profit off of exploiting Jess’s life. Theres also Chrysalis one of the producers and she’s trying to keep Jess on a tight leash. There’s always cameras following Jess and she usually has a mic so she has to be careful about sneaking around set and that’s when things are pretty suspenseful because we don’t know if she actually got away with anything or if someone was watching the whole time.

This book was pretty good, we didn’t know who we could trust, but there was always an end goal. Things got dangerous on set and there were some twists that I wasn’t expecting. I will say the book is short so things felt rushed, the ending shows that not everything has a happy ending but I was pretty pleased with how everything was wrapped up.