Great book for those hard to please boys

Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick by Joe Schreiber
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Awesome, fun read!  Give to those high schoolers who don't like to read and I guarantee they will like this.  Should appeal to both guys and girls.  The pace is high octane fast!  Essentially, Perry Stormaire is a senior, with a lawyer father who runs his life (read: Tiger Dad) and he is trying to get into Columbia.  The family has invited a foreign exchange student into their house for the year and instead of a gorgeous co-ed, they get Gobi.  Plain, banal, and needing much help, Gobi, whom good guy Perry looks out for at school.


But when his parents pressure him into taking Gobi to the prom as his date, the train comes off the track and that's when it all starts to go completely nuts!  So if you have teens who like action, assassins, mysteries, underdog heroes, a touch of romance, and some very close calls with death, the police and general mayhem, give them this book.


I can't tell you any more than to say that it kept me at the edge of my seat, so much that I finished reading it in two nights.  The characters are great.  The writing is funny, touching and really draws you into the moment. Two of my favorite lines from the book are: "I couldn't remember the theme of the prom but it seemed to be something along the lines of Social Darwinism Under the Stars.  Lights and shimmering tinsel had transformed the gymnasium into a pulsating soup of glandular hostility." I mean reallY!  How can you not love it?


I will say that having read some of the complaints about this book, you need to think of this book as a fantasy book, not a reality book.  It's like a die-hard movie.  Clearly, you will have to suspend belief. But if you can do that, it will be a fun ride.


A nice touch was having each chapter open with a college application question which the chapter then proceeded to answer in a roundabout way, which all plays into the climatic ending.


A must read for this year!


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