SPONTANEOUS BY AARON STARMER

Rating: 4.5 stars

Goodreads Book Description:

A darkly funny and spectacularly original exploration of friendship, goodbyes - and spontaneous combustion.

Mara Carlyle’s senior year is going as normally as could be expected, until -wa-bam! - fellow senior Katelyn Ogden explodes during third period pre-calc.

Katelyn is the first, but she won’t be the last teenager to blow up without warning or explanation. As the seniors continue to pop like balloons and the national eye turns to Mara’s suburban New Jersey hometown, the FBI rolls in and the search for a reason is on.

Whip-smart and blunt, Mara narrates the end of their world as she knows it while trying to make it to graduation in one piece. It's an explosive year punctuated by romance, quarantine, lifelong friendship, hallucinogenic mushrooms, bloggers, ice cream trucks, “Snooze Button™,” Bon Jovi, and the filthiest language you’ve ever heard from the President of the United States.

Aaron Starmer rewrites the rulebook with Spontaneous. But beneath the outrageous is a ridiculously funny, super honest, and truly moving exemplar of the absurd and raw truths of being a teenager in the 21st century . . . and the heartache of saying goodbye.

My Review:

I was sent a copy of Spontaneous to review from HarperCollins Australia and I must say that I was incredibly intrigued! I mean teenagers spontaneously combusting…who doesn’t want to know about that?!

NOTE: Spontaneous may not to appeal to everyone as the protagonist, Mara is very snarky and this book is quite overblown in the plot.

I personally found Spontaneous to be humorous, witty and well written, however there is a darker side to this book. Teenagers are doing everything they can possibly do before spontaneously combusting, they’re acting with desperate behaviour to tick as much off their bucket-lists within reason.

Although there is a LOT going on in this book, there are some quieter moments between Mara and Dylan who developed a sort of instant-relationship but were able to find someone to open up to one another.

As all the chaos continues, I continued to ask myself “Why are they exploding? How will they fix it?” and unfortunately I feel as though Spontaneous didn’t really answer that question. But I still enjoyed it nonetheless; it was a fast paced, chaos packed adventure!

Spontaneous deals with how we try to find meaning in everything and unfortunately sometimes, there isn’t one. We as human beings, we hang onto every word and action, expect it to mean something and be part of something special. But that’s not the way life works, not every detail - how big or little that may be - can mean something. Spontaneous really does come to terms with how meaning sometimes isn’t existent, even in our everyday lives.

Think Lovely Thoughts xo