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SLAY /

By day, seventeen-year-old Kiera Johnson is an honors student, a math tutor, and one of the only Black kids at Jefferson Academy. But at home, she joins hundreds of thousands of Black gamers who duel worldwide as Nubian personas in the secret multiplayer online role-playing card game, SLAY. No one knows Kiera is the game developer, not her friends, her family, not even her boyfriend, Malcolm, who believes video games are partially responsible for the "downfall of the Black man." But when a teen in Kansas City is murdered over a dispute in the SLAY world, news of the game reaches mainstream media, and SLAY is labeled a racist, exclusionist, violent hub for thugs and criminals. Even worse, an anonymous troll infiltrates the game, threatening to sue Kiera for "anti-white discrimination." Driven to save the only world in which she can be herself, Kiera must preserve her secret identity and harness what it means to be unapologetically Black in a world intimidated by Blackness. But can she protect her game without losing herself in the process?

Notes

Reviews:

Washington Post's 18 Books to Read this Fall
Refinery29's 12 Books Everyone Will be Talking about This Season
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year
A New York Public Library Top Ten Best Books of 2019
Book Riot's Fall Books to Add to Your TBR Pile
ABA Top Ten Indie Next Pick
ABA Indies Introduce selection
Junior Library Guild Selection
B&N Teen Blog's 20 Biggest YA Debuts of the Fall
Bookish's Fall 2019 Can’t-Miss Young Adult Books
Bustle’s 20 Captivating New Books From 2019


★ "Gripping and timely." - People
★ "The novel Black girl nerds have been waiting for." - Refinery29
★ "Remarkable, innovative, heart-pounding." - BuzzFeed
★ "Morris immerses readers in the world of gaming with her charged, timely, and witty debut." - Entertainment Weekly
★ "A snappy YA debut." - Washington Post
★ "Unlike anything out there ... Easily the best debut novel of the year." - Paste Magazine
★ "Morris does a fantastic job of showing diversity within the black community ... Gamers and black activists alike will be ready to SLAY all day." - Kirkus Reviews
★ "Readers are invited to learn about the black experience in game culture through a compelling new lens. Exploring different versions of the African American experience, this is an important title for public and school libraries." - School Library Journal
★ "Kiera is so many of us Blerds; and Morris has truly captured the holistic experiences of many Black digital users." - The Horn Book
★ "Readers will cheer for Kiera as she slays her own demons, and they'll come away from the novel desperately wishing SLAY were more than the product of Morris' imagination." - BookPage
★ "SLAY doesn't play games with its bold content and character development, guiding readers through various complex levels that explore the wide, gorgeous African diaspora." - Shelf Awareness
No.
Barcode
Branch
Location
Call No.
Status
Due Date
1
E10057
SKW
High School
F MOR
Available
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