Summary (from Goodreads):
It is a universally acknowledged truth that high school sucks. But on the first day of his senior year, Greg Gaines thinks he’s figured it out. The answer to the basic existential question: How is it possible to exist in a place that sucks so bad? His strategy: remain at the periphery at all times. Keep an insanely low profile. Make mediocre films with the one person who is even sort of his friend, Earl.
This plan works for exactly eight hours. Then Greg’s mom forces him to become friends with a girl who has cancer. This brings about the destruction of Greg’s entire life.
Review: This book follows Greg, a high school boy who is just trying to coast his way through till the end. He makes it very clear that he doesn't belong to any of the normal high school cliques and just tries to stay neutral with everybody. He does have one friend named Earl. Earl doesn't really have the best home life or didn't have that great of a childhood, he doesn't live in the best neighborhood, and he also has a smoking habit. Greg and Earl make movie parodies together, and have done this since they were in elementary school after they discovered that they both love old classic movies. The third main character is Rachael. Greg and Rachel sort of used to be friends/boyfriend and girlfriend, but they have not really been in contact in a long time besides occasionally seeing each other at school. During their senior year, Rachel ends up getting leukemia and Greg's mom decided that Greg needs to go hangout with her and try to make her feel better. Greg does not want to do this. He feels like its weird to just randomly call her after she gets diagnosed with cancer.
This book had a very easy style of writing that made the book fly by while being very entertaining. I am sort of on the fence about this book because there lots of things that I really enjoyed about it, but there are also some things that kind of annoyed me. So let me start by telling you what I enjoyed about this book. First thing is that a lot of this book was written like a script. I find that it made the book very interactive and reminded me that Greg was the one narrating. Greg is a filmmaker, so obviously he would write his conversations as scripts. Also, this book felt like it was very honest to me. I felt like the reactions to some of the things that Greg had in the book were very truthful to how a seventeen year old boy would act in those situations. There is no fairytale love story with expectations that could not be reached, and the author reminds you of that many times. As far as characters go, I really liked Rachel. I thought she was very sweet and cared about Greg a lot as a friend even though most of the time he didn't know the right things to say. The humor in this book for me, was off and on. Sometimes I found it hilarious and other times I was just sitting there rolling my eyes. As far as the things that I didn't like, going back to the humor, I thought there were many times where the humor was very crude, and I get it, they are teenage boys. Honestly I feel like those kinds of jokes are a lot funnier in person then that are written down. A lot of the times, a joke would go on for what felt like forever and I just did not find it funny. Another thing that was very frustrating to me was how much the narrator was trying to convince me that the book was horrible. The first few times that he said it, it was kind of funny, but after awhile it just got old. The last thing, is Greg being so insecure, and that sort of ties into the last point. I really didn't like how mean Greg was to himself. I made me sad to see him call himself these bad things and not be able to take a compliment.
Overall, this is a very quick and funny read and I did enjoy the book. I would recommend this book to anybody looking for a little laugh.
Rating: I give this book a 3/5 stars.
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