Wake

The premise of this story: a girl undergoes an experimental treatment to give her sight when she's never had it before. It's a successful procedure, for the most part - but in addition to the real world, Caitlin can also see the internet (there are medical explanations for this, I promise). Slowly, due to its uplink with Caitlin's mind, the internet begins to become sentient. What's even cooler: Caitlin purposefully helps it along. This book was incredibly entertaining - I really loved Caitlin's character, and the supporting characters were nicely developed as well - and the philosophical discussions about consciousness and what constitutes life was fresh and interesting. Usually we get androids to help us think about that, but this time it's the entire internet, influencing millions of humans around the world; it's a much bigger scope, and so is a thornier issue to grapple with. The writing was par for the course for a YA novel, a little simplistic, and there were two additional storylines that felt like they were dropped midway through, but I'm intrigued enough to pick up the next book when I find it at my used bookstore.