The very worst and most concerning moment in this book honestly feels like something that got randomly thrown in sometime after the book was written. It is way out of place and adds nothing to the story, even from a secular standpoint. Ingrid gets involved in a text exchange with someone who accidentally sends her a message. The message reads that a group, wanting to surprise a guy they knew, “pitched in to buy a plane ticket to bring his boyfriend here… It’s going to be so romantic. We think he’s going to propose to Todd”. To make this worse, the sweet grandma chimes in saying, “How sweet. Todd should say yes”. So sad and unnecessary. The only other related content to this is when Lorren asks Ingrid, “Are you into boys?” and when we find out Ingrid and Lorren were “married” in their video game because it got them extra experience points.

A lot of the plot revolves around Ingrid receiving a much higher than normal amount of wrong number texts. She responds to these by letting them know it is the wrong number in a witty way. Most of these are innocent (the biggest exception being the one above) and short, however one turns into a longer-term ongoing virtual relationship that grows and grows, eventually becoming a primary focus of the love story that unfolds. At one point Lorren calls and then Facetimes him to check him out for Ingrid. Ingrid falls hard for this boy and it all feels sweet, but… at the end of the day she is texting long-term with someone she doesn’t know. The author attempts to be cautious with this (more on that in the next section), but the concept in real life is obviously fraught with peril. The book even makes light of this a bit (“Chances of this being a serial killer: 87 percent”, “I trust you not to invite an axe murderer”), which honestly increases the danger in this concept even more for young readers. .

The book puts quite a bit of positive focus on online video games. The main characters bond and have wonderful times playing every night for hours. This includes voice chat at times with people they don’t know.

There is naturally a good bit of content around crushes, liking, thinking someone is cute, but for the type of book it is actually a bit milder than you might expect. The exception is in the conclusion where there is a pretty significant emotional buildup to the ‘happy’ conclusion. There is a kiss at the end, but no lingering details, but Ingrid says she won’t tell grandma yet (doesn’t say why). It mentions a couple sitting close enough so they are intentionally touching against each other.

Similarly, Ingrid jokes about literally loving her phone. She is on it a ton.

There is some sneakiness, mostly around Ingrid and Lorren making calls when they know they aren’t supposed to. Later in the story Ingrid and Trotter “had been texting through morning classes”. An example, meant to be sweet, mentions “holding your hand in the hall until a teacher catches us and tells us to stop, but as soon as they’re not looking, I’m holding your hand again”.

Grandma gives Ingrid some boy advice when asked about liking two boys, “Like both of them. Like ten others. If your status with someone changes, just respect the boundaries of the relationship.”

There is a lot of clever banter and some of it unfortunately dances up to and then jumps over the line:

• “Holy hot chocolate”, “Holy ravioli”, “holy potatoes”, “holy peperoni”, “holy pineapple”
• “Inherited a haunted house from dead relatives horror movie vibe”
• There is joking about knowing a house is haunted if something grabs your foot when it hangs off the bed. Leads to more joking about meeting a ghost, like its light and funny. A character comments jokingly about “potentially living in a horror movie”
• “You’d be the first to die in a zombie apocalypse" and other jokes about zombies, murders, etc.

The following terms are used: “Thank Todd” (in place of “Thank God”), pissed, “randos” (people you don’t know).