Just City

Just City is a fantastic book that will have its readers contemplating life and the choices we all make. Nathan is ready to pitch the startup idea that he and his best friend Jack have been working on. Unfortunately, Nathan needs to come up with ten-thousand dollars of his own money to submit the pitch to the New Entrepreneur Incubator. Nathan’s grandmother is a neuroscientist and has just finished a version of a new video game she has been working on called Just City. She needs beta testers for the game and recruits Nathan and his friends to play the game. She will pay them each five hundred dollars plus bonuses for doing well in the game. At first, the game starts out easy for Nathan. His character is much like he is, so when it comes to finding a job and a wife, Nathan breezes through these tasks. The assigned characters change in the game, however, and when Nathan’s character is a young man accused of killing someone and admitting that he did it to the authorities, Nathan has a hard time controlling his character’s decision-making. Nathan gets mad at the game because all of his friends have more points than him, and he brings the problem up to his grandmother. She explains that, as in real-life, sometimes we are not in control of everything. Everyone’s brain works differently and has different cognitive abilities. This is why one person can make good decisions that will lead them to success and happiness, and others will end up jobless and homeless.

This story was so well written because it followed Nathan through all of his own choices. He starts thinking about how his friend Jack really isn’t a good friend at all based on how he treats other people.

Just City will make readers understand a little bit better about how the brain works and hopefully stimulate compassion for those who are less fortunate. Everybody has different circumstances, and sometimes there are things that happen that are out of our control.

Along the way, Nathan meets many different people: a couple who does not believe in modern medicine, a girl who does tarot, and a homeless man who hits Nathan after Nathan gives him money. All of Nathan’s experiences make him who he is and allow him to make the choices he does. Just City is an amazing, engaging book with life lessons that all adults should be reading about.

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