I liked Hank's books - they're an easy light read, and it's refreshing to read something about young people written by someone with an understanding of social media and the internet. The whole mysterious obelisks recently reminded me of this series.
I'm now about halfway through the second book. It's not only much better because it does not suffer from April as the LOLuWuZOMG narrator voice, but it also feels super relevant now, partly because the characters tell things I really need to hear, but partly because it helps me understand/cope with what's happening right now. He wrote it just before the pandemic, but he intended the Carl event to be reminiscent of any large global event, so it's hard not to read it as trying to predict online discourse around Covid. Reading the second book play out a year after the Big Event whilst us living a year after 'our' Big Event resonates much more than I'd expected.