Schulman (A Day at the Beach) has created a cautionary tale focused around a timely issue: an e-mail that goes, unhappily, viral.
Fifteen-year-old prep school student Jake Bergamot, his parents, Richard and Lizzie, and his adopted Chinese six-year-old sister, Coco, have recently moved from Ithaca to Manhattan, where Richard is now senior executive vice chancellor of Astor University of the City of New York, working on a project that will reclaim real estate, create jobs and schools and all the good stuff that everyone wants.
Jake goes to a party that he doesn't particularly want to attend, has too much to drink and is hit on--hard--by his eighth-grade hostess, Daisy. Jake's friends razz him about robbing the cradle, and he extricates himself from her clutches, bolting for the subway and home.
The next morning he turns on his computer and finds an e-mail from Daisy, a video so frankly pornographic it is like nothing he has ever seen. He quickly sends it to his best friend, who sends it on, who sends it to... within hours, around the world it goes.
Suddenly, Richard Bergamot's boss tells him to stay underground "until this all blows over." No one wants someone whose kid has screwed up so publicly making decisions for their children. Meanwhile, Lizzie and Coco experience public humiliation at a high-toned Plaza Hotel slumber party in the aftermath of Jake's error in judgment. Schulman has written an incisive exploration of a family owning up to what each of them really wants and what it will cost all of them. --Valerie Ryan