Book Review: "The Great American Whatever" by Tim Federle

"When I'm about to do something that makes me nervous, I imagine how the ideal screenplay version of events would play out. As in: I wish my life were a screenplay that I could write. Because if you leave it all up to fate, who knows how your movie's going to turn out? So far mine's a fairly standard coming-of-age LGBT genre film, with a somewhat macabre horror twist."

The last six months have been quite tough for 16-year-old Quinn Roberts. There was a time when all he really cared about was writing screenplays for movies his sister Annabeth would direct, hanging out with his best friend Geoff, and trying to work up the courage to come out of the closet. But that was before the car accident which changed everything, leaving him and his mother to wallow in their grief and basically hibernate in their house. Quinn hasn't been to school, or even in public, in six months, and he certainly hasn't thought about writing any more screenplays.

Geoff has decided six months of grief is enough, and he's determined to get Quinn out of the house and back into life again. And he's pulling Quinn straight into the deep end, taking him to his first college party, where he meets Amir, a guy (a college guy!) who gets his pulse racing. But how do you try to charm someone when your knack for witty dialogue has abandoned you?

Quinn is unprepared for how Amir makes him feel, despite the fact he can never do or say the right thing when he's around him. (And don't even talk about their bowling date.) But what Quinn is even less prepared for is the secrets that everyone has been keeping with him. How was life going on around him and he wasn't even aware of what was happening among those he cared about? Should he feel betrayed, angry, sad, or some combination of all three? And how is he supposed to get on with his life?

The Great American Whatever is a sweet, sappy, quirky book about how you find the strength to pull your life together when it's been ripped apart. It's about friendship, love, infatuation, grief, secrets, and the movies—not in that order. And it's about finding out the things you've always believed in aren't always true. You really feel for Quinn, even if you wish that someone in his life would just shake him from time to time to snap him out of his funk. But that being said, he's definitely a memorable character.

I enjoyed this book, although I felt Quinn's narration a little hard to follow at times, but I guess that was a reflection of his ADD. Tim Federle draws you into the story very quickly, and makes you care about these characters. It's definitely a book that makes you smile, makes you chuckle, and may even make you tear up from time to time. This is another book I'm so glad kids coming to terms with their sexuality will have to rely on.

Book Review: "Gutshot Straight" by Lou Berney

Every now and again, I love finding a good crime novel. And while I love reading books by my favorite mainstays—Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Steve Hamilton, Barry Eisler, etc.—I love discovering a new author writing their first book, or stumbling upon an author I've never heard of before and being wowed by them. So I was tremendously pleased to find Gutshot Straight, the debut novel from Lou Berney, whose most recent book, the exquisite The Long and Faraway Gone, was among my favorite books of 2015.

Charles Samuel "Shake" Bouchon has been living a life of petty crimes since his first arrest for grand theft auto when he was 19. Now 42, he's just been released from prison again, and he's trying to figure out what to do with his life. Is it time to settle down and finally fulfill his dream of opening a restaurant?

"He wondered where exactly in his life his shit had gone sideways, and why. It was hard to say. It hadn't been a couple of momentous decisions that had determined the course of his life. No volcanic eruptions that altered and fixed his personal topography. Instead what had happened were all the decisions along the way, most of which he didn't even realize at the time were decisions, the bits of coincidence and circumstance, good luck and bad, the steady, slow accretion of rock and soil and sediment. He needed a volcanic eruption. He needed to make a move."

But when Alexandra Ilandryan, a powerful Armenian crime boss, asks him to do one more easy job for her, he is tantalized—and not just because Alexandra may be the most beautiful woman he's ever known. All he needs to do is drive a car into Las Vegas, pick up a suitcase, and bring it back to her. Sounds pretty easy. So what could go wrong?

Well, as you can imagine, a lot of things can and do go wrong. Because although he's done his share of time, often it's been out of loyalty to others and not his stupidity. So Shake has brains and a conscience, and pretty strong beliefs about what he'll do and what he won't. These aren't traits that guarantee success in the crime world—they're actually fairly dangerous. So needless to say, it isn't long before everything goes awry for Shake, in more ways than he was expecting.

In Gutshot Straight, Berney takes us on an Elmore Leonard-esque jaunt, replete with double and triple crosses, eccentric criminals, one beautiful and utterly untrustworthy woman, and lots of quirky characters and situations. This is a lot of fun, but Berney never lets the fun and the zaniness overtake his storytelling. Even though you may know where the plot will ultimately end, it's such an enjoyable journey, and Shake, in particular, is such an appealing character, that you want to know what happens to him. I've said before it's the mark of a talented writer if they can get you to care deeply about criminals, despite their actions.

This book isn't perfect, but it is a quick, compelling read that I practically devoured. I'm glad to see Berney wrote one more book in this series before moving to a standalone novel. If you enjoy crime novels that hearken back to Elmore Leonard's early days, pick this one up. If not, I'd encourage you to pick up The Long and Faraway Gone, because you need to experience just a little of Lou Berney's talent. (You'll thank me.)

Book Review: "The Nest" by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

What is it about family dysfunction that makes it so upsetting and unappealing to experience, yet so compelling to read about?

Leo, Beatrice, Jack, and Melody Plumb are four siblings whose relationships with each other are, to put it mildly, strained and complex. They've spent much of their adult lives waiting for one pivotal moment: the day the youngest, Melody, turns 40, so they can take possession of "The Nest," a joint trust fund their father set up when they were younger. Melody and Jack, in particular, are relying upon their share of "The Nest" to end their financial struggles and help them move their lives in the direction they are hoping.

There's one challenge to this, however. Leo, the oldest, the flame to his siblings' moths, found himself in a bit of trouble a few months earlier. Trouble which caused a car accident that injured a 19-year-old waitress, who was not his wife. Trouble which sent him to rehab. And trouble which has put "The Nest" in danger just months before Melody's 40th birthday. The Plumb siblings are apoplectic at the thought they might not get the financial support they were counting on, and cannot believe that once again, Leo has let them down.

Leo promises to make good on the money, and asks for a few months to put together a plan. It isn't long before old resentments come to the surface again, while each of them has to deal with their own crises and the secrets each of them have tried to hide. Melody, the overprotective mother of twin teenage girls, has been counting on the money to send both girls to prominent colleges, as well as bail her family out of their financial woes. Jack, whose antiques shop has been struggling, has gotten himself into more debt, unbeknownst to his husband, which leads him to make even more foolish decisions. And Bea, once a successful writer with some promise, can't seem to get her long-awaited novel written.

As they wait for Leo to share his plans and right all of their lives, Leo is struggling with doing the same for himself. For a person who has always led a bit of a charmed life, watching people buy his ideas and fall in behind him, suddenly he finds himself at emotional and financial odds. And while he wants to help his siblings, he also wants to put his whole life behind him and start over, no matter who might get caught in the crossfire.

It's hard to believe that The Nest is Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney's debut novel, because it's written with tremendous self-assurance. These are fairly unappealing characters but Sweeney keeps them interesting even as they irritate you, even as you can't believe how horrible they are to each other and those they supposedly care about. And Leo is the worst of them all (although not by much).

I thought this book was really good, but in my opinion, what kept it from being great was that Sweeney added a few somewhat-related sub-plots that seemed unnecessary, and which distracted from the strength of the story at the book's core. When the book switched to the story of the waitress who was involved in Leo's accident, or a neighbor of Bea's former editor, I didn't feel as if these storylines added to the book in any way, and I became a bit frustrated.

But in the end, these are minor irritations. Most of us will never have concerns relative to when we're getting access to our trust fund, which may be why it's fun to live vicariously through this spoiled family. But even as the dysfunction and drama ratchets up, Sweeney never lets go of her characters' hearts, even if they're hard to find through all of their bad behavior.

Book Review: "Sunday's on the Phone to Monday" by Christine Reilly

This one just didn't work for me.

Mathilde and Claudio meet at a party at NYU in 1998. Mathilde is an aspiring actress, creative and privileged, while Claudio left his home in Detroit and never looked back, working to buy a record shop in the heart of New York City. Their relationship consumes them both, sometimes whimsical, sometimes all-encompassing, but tremendously fulfilling, and it isn't long before they marry and begin building a somewhat Bohemian life together.

The couple raise three children—studious Natasha; creative, sensitive Lucy, who suffers from a rare heart ailment; and their adopted daughter Carly, empathetic, curious, and occasionally intense. As the girls deal with the usual and the unusual ups and downs of childhood and young adulthood, Claudio and Mathilde face their own challenges as well, mostly in the guise of Claudio's emotionally troubled sister, Jane, whom he moved from an unhealthy life in Louisiana to a mental hospital in New York.

Sunday's on the Phone to Monday is a quirky, thought-provoking, and at times, emotionally compelling book about family and the powerful hold it can have over us, in both the best and worst of times. It's a story about love, about living life to the fullest you can imagine, and attempting to weather the storms that come your way. It's also a book about relationships—romantic, familial, platonic—and how they shape our worldviews and our actions.

I thought Christine Reilly created some interesting, complex characters, but despite spending more than 300 pages with them, I never really felt as if I got to know them. I think this is because the book is told in short, vignette-like chapters, some of which happen within an hour or day of each other, some of which happen months, even years later. It's hard to get a hold on what is happening because much of the book is told in a somewhat stream-of-consciousness, dreamlike way that I found off-putting.

The book's biggest quirk was the constant capitalization of the word "Heart," in whatever ways it was used (Heartache, Heartbreak, etc.). While I think I understand what Reilly was trying to achieve it stopped me in my tracks every time I saw that word capitalized in the middle of a sentence, and it is used quite a bit in this book. I don't know if this is intentional or if this is something that will be fixed before the book is officially released, but it really bothered me.

I think Reilly definitely has talent and creativity, and knows how to paint beautiful visual pictures. While Sunday's on the Phone to Monday didn't click for me, perhaps people more comfortable with less linear, more dreamlike storytelling will find this moving and fulfilling.

NetGalley, Edelweiss, and Touchstone provided an advance copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making it available!

Book Review: "Why We Came to the City" by Kristopher Jansma

The four of them were pretty much inseparable since they met in college several years ago—Sara, the editor who tried to control the group's every movement; her boyfriend George, the sweet yet anxious astronomer; Jacob, the poet, larger than life but unsure of what life he wanted; and Irene, the artist, flighty yet passionate, who has done all she could to put her past behind her.

"Back in Ithaca, these four had traveled nearly everywhere as a pack. While every other college clique experienced seismic shifts and occasional mergers, they had never grown apart."

One winter night, the four meet at a posh reception thrown by the owners of the gallery where Irene works. They encounter another former classmate, William Cho, who had always been enamored of Irene, but the four lived in their own separate world. And as the five enjoy drunken revelry after all of the guests have gone, William hopes for the chance to connect with Irene, George tries to find the courage to finally propose to Sara, and Jacob ponders the foolishness of love. But they all have no idea how the coming year will change all of them.

Kristopher Jansma's Why We Came to the City is a powerful, beautifully written book about friendship, love, and how we tackle (and avoid) the challenges that life throws our way. It's about the cocky confidence of youth, the feeling that everything you want can be yours if you just want it badly enough, and how you handle it when things don't break your way. And it's a book about how one person can have a profound effect on you, even more so when they're gone.

I really enjoyed this. I hesitate to compare books but its structure reminded me a bit of A Little Life in that while there was one character at its core, the book spent time focusing on each of the other characters. That was both a strength and a slight weakness of Why We Came to the City, because it drifted a little bit more than it needed to into the lives of the characters when they were apart from each other, but it was when they were together that they were most fascinating and most dysfunctional. I think I loved George's character the most, and while Jacob's character is probably the most fascinating, he was the hardest to really get to know.

Jansma is a pretty terrific writer, and he has created a rich, moving story that will make you think of your own friendships and your own youth (if you're more than a little bit removed from that period of time as I am), and how the problems which at one time may have seemed insurmountable really shaped your life.

Book Review: "I Don't Like Where This is Going" by John Dufresne

John Dufresne does his best Carl Hiaasen impression with his newest book, I Don't Like Where This is Going, and achieves mixed results.

Wylie "Coyote" Melville has fled his Florida home, where people are trying to kill him, for the anonymity of Las Vegas. He's more than a bit of a drinker, but he has a good heart, even working at a crisis center, where he is often the one speaking to distressed and lonely people on the center's helpline. One afternoon, when he and a friend are hanging out at the Luxor casino, Wylie sees a young woman fall 30 floors to her death.

Wylie can't get the whole scene out of his head, and he wants to understand who this woman was and what happened. Clearly someone doesn't want him to learn the truth—for some reason, he is thwarted at every turn. And it's more than just people refusing to answer his questions or pretending not to recognize the woman's photo when they clearly do. The people who want to hide the truth will stop at nothing—framing him for crimes he didn't commit, even violence.

With his best friend, sleight-of-hand master Bay, at his side, Wylie attempts to uncover the truth, and along the way the two encounter more than their share of unusual characters and bizarre situations. And at the same time, he's confronting crises within his own family, and contemplating some serious issues, such as homelessness, human trafficking, and mistreatment of women, along the way.

This is an intriguing book. I liked Wylie's character and found him much more complex than I originally thought. But Dufresne crams far too many quirky supporting characters and situations into this book, and while some of them are amusing, most of them seem almost like red herrings and distract from the core of the plot. It seemed as if every time the book built up some momentum, the story took another detour. However, Dufresne is a great writer, so while the book meanders a bit, it's mostly an entertaining journey.

I'm a big fan of Dufresne's earlier works of fiction (I'd highly recommend Love Warps the Mind a Little in particular), but I wasn't aware he had begun dabbling in mystery. I Don't Like Where This is Going is apparently the second book featuring Wylie, and while I missed the first, I didn't feel as if I was missing a lot of background.

If you enjoy the quirkiness of Carl Hiaasen and early Elmore Leonard, combined with some good character development, pick this one up. It's a little bit zany, but it's balanced out by strong storytelling.

NetGalley and W.W. Norton & Company provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!

Book Review: "Highly Illogical Behavior" by John Corey Whaley

After reading his third book (following Where Things Come Back and Noggin), I'm seriously becoming a John Corey Whaley groupie. Not that I wasn't already a huge fan, but I absolutely fell in love with the heart and humor of this book, and as always, his writing is funny and sensitive and warm without being too clever.

Solomon Reed is 16 years old. He hasn't left his house in three years, since a panic attack compelled him to sit in the fountain at his school until his parents came to take him home. He's smart and funny, he loves movies and books and Star Trek: The Next Generation, but the thought of leaving his house makes him hyperventilate to the point he cannot breathe. So while his parents worry about his future, for now they're content to let him go to school online and spend his life inside his house, with only them and his spry, sassy grandmother for company.

Lisa Praytor is determined to escape her hometown and make something of herself. She has her sights set on attending the second-best psychology program in the country, but there's a catch: her essay must deal with her personal experience with mental illness. After a chance encounter with Sol's mother, she finds a solution to that problem—she's going to "fix" Solomon (whom she remembers from middle school) and get him to leave his home again. She knows it will be hard work, but isn't realizing her academic dreams worth a little effort?

It's not long before Lisa realizes that Sol may have problems, but he's far from the boring, crazy person she expected. The two develop a strong friendship, filled with movies and games and confiding in each other. Eventually Lisa introduces Sol to Clark, her good-looking, athletic boyfriend, whose lack of ambition has Lisa questioning what she means to him. The three become an inseparable trio.

Sol doesn't realize how much he needed friends, and Clark and Lisa are all too happy to oblige, more out of sheer enjoyment than her original ulterior motive. But as Sol shares his secrets, and starts to think about life outside his house, Lisa starts questioning her relationship with Clark, and what Sol's role might be in the problems they're having. And of course, Sol is not the only one caught in the crossfire.

When we're at our most vulnerable, how do we let our guard down to let people in when we've done just fine on our own (or so we think)? At what point do we put the needs of others over our own needs, and why do we let others force us to act in ways which make us uncomfortable? Highly Illogical Behavior is about what it's like to just let go and put your faith in others, even as your heart and your head are telling you not to. It's a book about coming to terms with our fears and accepting who we are, even if we don't fit the mold most people expect us to.

While obviously the idea that parents would allow their teenage son to stay in their house for three years without leaving seems a little implausible, this issue doesn't detract from the beauty and heart of this book. Yes, we all know I'm a sap, but this book made me laugh and made me think even as it made me tear up. Solomon is such a fantastic character, and while Lisa's motivations certainly were questionable, I really liked Clark and many of the book's supporting characters as well.

Bravo again, John Corey Whaley. I promise not to stalk you, but I will be eagerly awaiting your next book, because I love the way you write. And I wouldn't mind if you wanted to bring a little more Solomon back into my life some day, too.

Thanks to First to Read and Dial Books for making available an advance copy of this book, in exchange for my unbiased review!!