Science fiction novel where a poor girl learns that her sister's visage is being used for a famous movie star

Question

I think I read this 3-4 years ago, maybe as an ebook. The bit that I remember is, I think, not even the main plot, but it's what's sticking in my head. The protagonist is a female, teenage I think, in a "10-20 years into the future" dystopia. Her family is poor, not certain who's actually in the family except her and her sister. Her sister is very attractive, but can't showcase it due to their poverty, plus there's a famous movie star that looks a lot like her, so everyone assumes that she's trying to copy the movie star's looks. Meanwhile, the protagonist is convinced that her sister is the one being copied. Somewhere near the end of the book, she infiltrates a huge skyscraper that the movie star lives in, looking for answers. What she finds is a functional, clean, but completely deserted, apartment, with no evidence that the movie star lives there. I forget how the revelation happens, maybe accidentally tripping a system, but it turns out that the movie star doesn't exist as anything but a hologram, which indeed is programmed with the looks and style of the protagonist's sister. And... I don't really remember what they do after that.

I think it was meant as a Young Adult book. The only bit of violence I remember was a scene earlier in the book where the girl gets approached by some boys on the street at night, who make vague threats until they get chased off by a random boy who shows up, beats them up, and then... I think smashes a nearby camera and gives the memory card to her if she ever needs to use it as evidence? My memory is kind of vague, but I think maybe he's who she learned the building infiltration skills from.

Answer 1

I need to grab a copy from the library to be certain (ironically, it's not currently available because the library apparently ran out of the number of times the publisher would allow the book to be borrowed before the license ran out), but I believe this is All Rights Reserved by Gregory Scott Katsoulis.

Speth Jime is anxious to deliver her Last Day speech and celebrate her transition into adulthood. The moment she turns fifteen, Speth must pay for every word she speaks, for every nod, for every scream and even every gesture of affection. She’s been raised to know the consequences of falling into debt, and can’t begin to imagine the pain of having her eyes shocked for speaking words that she’s unable to afford.

But when Speth’s friend Beecher commits suicide rather than work off his family’s crippling debt, she can’t express her shock and dismay without breaking her Last Day contract and sending her family into Collection. Rather than read her speech—rather than say anything at all—she closes her mouth and vows never to speak again, sparking a movement that threatens to destroy her, her family and the entire city around them.

Further details include her parents having been taken by the state for inherited debt from an ancestor who pirated music, "Placers" who act as urban ninjas, breaking into rich homes to place new products there to entice them, and mandatory eyeball advertisements. I have found a reference here to Speth's sister, Saretha, being sued for looking too much like a famous actress, which it makes further sense that this would be a situation of outrage, that her visage is being stolen, and then she's further being charged for that.

As to how I found it, it kept grating on me that I couldn't quite recall why the protagonist was being attacked, and who the mysterious rescuer was, and in the back of my mind, there was some idea that she couldn't talk, and that there was a later scene where her rescuer got her to a place without surveillance, where she could speak, which then led me to remembering the plot point of words being copyrighted (I'd forgotten that it also included gestures), which led me to search for dystopia novel words copyrighted, which led me to the Goodreads entry. With the mention of the Placers, it suddenly made more sense that she'd have learned from them how to infiltrate a building, as she did.