A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend

I feel dirty reading young adult fiction, but this book was listed in the Editor's Choice of the NYT book review, so I can use that to rationalize my intellectual downfall. The book is about an unpopular girl who is trying to honour her dead best friend's memory by putting on a play that she (the dead friend) wrote. That part of the novel I'm fine with. The topic of teenagers dealing with grief while still trying to be like teenagers is handled very well in the novel. Unfortunately, none of the characters are at all likable.

The characters in the novel all seem to be pseudo-ironic faux-hipsters, who love ninjas, breaking into song, and complaining about how American horror movies are vastly inferior to the Korean originals. The only way the characters in the novel could have been more like cliched wannabe hipsters would have been if the novel were set in a Brooklyn dumpster and they had been drinking PBR instead of Merlot. Also, there's a good bit of generally snotty teenage behaviour, but that's to be expected in a novel about teens.

The premise of the novel is grand. The grief of young people is handled very well. Unfortunately, the characters are like an unholy union of Glee fans and people who take pictures from 4chan and post them to other sites on the Internets, that is to say, people who desperately want others to think they are “cool,” “with it,” and “hip to the scene,” etc. For young people, I think this would be a great book. For jaded early-middle-aged shut-ins like myself, it's just a frustrating disappointment.

I feel dirty reading young adult fiction, but this book was listed in the Editor's Choice of the NYT book review, so I can use that to rationalize my intellectual downfall. The book is about an unpopular girl who is trying to honour her dead best friend's memory by putting on a play that she (the dead friend) wrote. That part of the novel I'm fine with. The topic of teenagers dealing with grief while still trying to be like teenagers is handled very well in the novel. Unfortunately, none of the characters are at all likable.

The characters in the novel all seem to be pseudo-ironic faux-hipsters, who love ninjas, breaking into song, and complaining about how American horror movies are vastly inferior to the Korean originals. The only way the characters in the novel could have been more like cliched wannabe hipsters would have been if the novel were set in a Brooklyn dumpster and they had been drinking PBR instead of Merlot. Also, there's a good bit of generally snotty teenage behaviour, but that's to be expected in a novel about teens.

The premise of the novel is grand. The grief of young people is handled very well. Unfortunately, the characters are like an unholy union of Glee fans and people who take pictures from 4chan and post them to other sites on the Internets, that is to say, people who desperately want others to think they are “cool,” “with it,” and “hip to the scene,” etc. For young people, I think this would be a great book. For jaded early-middle-aged shut-ins like myself, it's just a frustrating disappointment.