Do you ever get to the point in your reading stack where you've just read a lot of books with depressing subject matter?
I do. I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm not really afraid to read anything that is too sad/intense/about cancer/etc. as I usually have a lighter, fun waiting for me.
This was one of those books.
There were some more serious bits to it, but when the tagline on the back reads, "Secrets. Scandals. ESP." It's usually going to be funny, takes itself so seriously that it's funny, or an unintentional train wreck.
Luckily, it was somewhere between funny and takes itself so seriously that it's funny.
Confused? An amazon summary, "Contemporary teen fiction with romance, secrets, scandals, and ESP from the author of Ten Things We Did (And Probably Shouldn't Have).
We weren't always like this. We used to be average New York City high school sophomores. Until our homeroom went for flu shots. We were prepared for some side effects. Maybe a headache. Maybe a sore arm. We definitely didn't expect to get telepathic powers. But suddenly we could hear what everyone was thinking. Our friends. Our parents. Our crushes. Now we all know that Tess is in love with her best friend, Teddy. That Mackenzie cheated on Cooper. That, um, Nurse Carmichael used to be a stripper.
Since we've kept our freakish skill a secret, we can sit next to the class brainiac and ace our tests. We can dump our boyfriends right before they dump us. We know what our friends really think of our jeans, our breath, our new bangs. We always know what's coming. Some of us will thrive. Some of us will crack. None of us will ever be the same.
So stop obsessing about your ex. We're always listening.
"Smart and frequently hilarious."--Publishers Weekly, starred
“A tour-de-force comic narration that will leave you gasping in awe—if you ever catch your breath from laughing.”—E. Lockhart, author of We Were Liars
“Hilarious, moving, and utterly ingenious.”—Robin Wasserman, author of The Book of Blood and Shadow and The Waking Dark “Sarah Mlynowski does it again with a fresh, fun, and fabulous story filled with secrets, surprises, and a sixth sense. Don’t even THINK about passing up this hilarious read!” —Elizabeth Eulberg, author of The Lonely Hearts Club “Finally, someone understands that if you develop powers as a teenager, it’s not the government you have to watch out for—it’s your best friends. Funny, realistic, heartfelt, satiric, and unpredictable.” —Ned Vizzini, New York Times bestselling author of It’s Kind of a Funny Story" AMAZON LINK OF JUSTICE
So, in case you missed it, the premise of the book revolves around a homeroom full of kids getting the flu shot at lunch one day and develop...an odd side effect.
Telepathy.
The book is a bit weird as the narration follows around everyone in the class to an extent; it portrays it as there's roughly 20 kids who had the vaccine that gives them telepathy, but there are about 8 characters the book actually likes to focus on.
Yet, the book has an aggravating habit of switching to speaking in third person directly to the reader then flipping to watching the scene unfold with a little commentary to the reader. It's odd and disconnecting from the book.
The book goes through the unfolding of the telepathic powers, the different quirks of how their telepathy seems to work, and then centers around five people having intense drama and FEELINGS towards each other.
Like high school, just less secrets.
Through the book I found it irritating that characters would pop up to provide a tidbit of information or to reveal a quirk of the power before being completely forgotten again. Or to prove a point of how confusing it is to be shunned from a group of very....well-connected people.
All in all, the book had funny moments, a few moments where the narration threw me out of the story, and an ending that led me to wonder if there would be more books (is this the first book in a series?).
Telepathy can be a nightmare in high school....and also might reveal that the school nurse used to be a stripper. Who knew?
Happy reading!
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