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
