Review Detail

Reader reviewed by Mairi

Junior is perceptive enough to realize that his parents are unhappy. He is also smart enough to acknowledge that he does not want to end up living their lives, so he decides to do the unthinkable and go to a non-reservation high school, though it means losing his only friend. At school, he meets a beautiful girl named Penelope and Gordy the Genius White Boy, two people who have nothing in common besides the fact that they're both nice to him.

As I had never heard a negative word spoken about this book, I decided to read it, and I am glad I did- from the first page, I could not stop laughing, yet even as I found Junior and his friends hilarious I recognized a lot of myself in them, especially Gordy. He was my favorite character; he had the best lines. Somewhere in the middle of the book he says that PCs are vulnerable to viruses like French people living during the bubonic plague, which has to be the best simile ever written.

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys YA, as Sherman Alexie captures the genre better than anyone- it's sometimes edgy, always entertaining, and it makes you think, as all good books should.