User Unfriendly is a little bit like Heir Apparent. Giannine, the heroine of Heir Apparent is even a character in User Unfriendly. I thought that User Unfriendly was an inferior book. The story didn't grab my attention and I didn't find myself trying to figure out what was happening; perhaps because it wasn't clear what was wrong. The ending was neat and interesting.

Arvin and his friends have hacked into a Rasmussen role playing game. They are themselves and their characters and are expecting the usual fighting, search for treasure, and strange creatures but something is wrong. They have found several holes and glitches in the program, things that would be taken care of if they were playing in a monitored (and expensive) Rasmussen virtual parlor and Arvin's mother, along for her first ever game, is sick. As time passes slowly in the game (5 days pass in an actual hour) mistakes are made more and more often, the quest is not what they expected, and Arvin's mother gets sicker and sicker until she eventually starts to disappear from the game.

Arvin is a self-conscious teen who worries that every move he makes looks dumb and who feels that the other players are judging him and not coming to a flattering conclusion. Interestingly, after the game is over, he finds that other players had the same thoughts about themselves. ( )