The Spectacular Now

"So, my beautiful fat girlfriend, Cassidy, is threatening to kick me to the curb again, my best friend suddenly wants to put the brakes on our lives of fabulous fun, my mom and big sister are plotting a future in which I turn into an atomic vampire, and my dad, well, my dad is a big fat question mark that I'm not sure I want the answer to."

I love voicey books and voicey authors, like Rainbow Rowell and John Green. They are the masters and I bow down every single time. So, when I came across Tim Tharp’s very voicey The Spectacular Now, I was immediately hooked! Okay, this one’s a bit of an “older” gem, published in 2008, and it was made into a movie in 2013, starring Shailene Woodley (The Fault in Our Stars, Divergent) and Miles Teller (Divergent). And as much as I love books and movies, these slipped by me. (In my defense, I was raising babies and toddlers at this time and probably watching Sesame Street and reading Goodnight Moon.) Anyway, as my good luck would have it, I finally found The Spectacular Now on audiobook and immediately started listening in the middle of my son’s hockey practice. I was hooked and would’ve continued indulging on the car ride home, except that it features older issues (alcohol, partying, references to sex, cursing--don't worry; it's no Tarantino) but I didn’t want my middle grade kids indulging, too. At least they can wait until high school, which is a perfect starting age group (Gr. 9+) for this book.

So, the book is narrated by Sutter Keeley, who’s this larger than life, no-problem/no-worries high schooler who knows full well he hasn’t got it all figured out—but that’s alright. We immediately learn he misses his dad, has a non-classically hot girlfriend, and would rather be partying than going to school. And he has the biggest heart—even if he uses it the wrong way and it gets him into trouble—including with his girlfriend. This plunges him into a new friendship with sci-fi-loving shy girl, Aimee Finicky. (Seriously, Tharp is perfection when it comes to character-naming.) The Sutterman, as he calls himself, takes Aimee under his wing—not to turn her into some cool girl protégé, but to help her find her voice at home and at school. As Sutter slowly starts to fall for Aimee, she, too, plunges into his world, where there’s no place for Aimee’s dreams for the future.

Tharp paints high school perfectly, molding and crafting two quintessential characters: the carefree cool guy and the hopelessly nerdy girl, and twists them and weaves them and wraps them around each other's hearts and yours. I did feel the story ended too quickly, and wished we could have just one more chapter, as I found myself worried for the Sutterman. Nevertheless, it was a super-fun, super-addictive read (well, listen if you’re an audiobook person like me). On that note, the narration on Audible was perfect, as the story takes place in OK and the narrator had the perfect amount of southern twang.