Spontaneous

-Aaron Starmer

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

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.

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I read this book some time ago and recently discovered it was made into a film! Now I’ll be searching for it and placing the book on hold through the library so I can enjoy it again. The story has a lot of gallows humor and gore. The main character is snarky, a little rude and a lot hilarious. I had many laugh-out-loud moments with this book. The story is unique and captivating while also being heartbreaking and hilarious. It seems odd, but it balances out nicely. I felt the novel captures teen angst perfectly and sets it against a backdrop of never-know-when-someone-will-explode. Teenage years are so difficult to navigate in the best of times, throwing spontaneous combustion into the mix was brilliant at shaking up the typical teen story status quo.

Favorite quotes: “I was coming to realize that if you don't look for something, then you rarely find it.”

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“Rumors are as important as anything. Even if they’re not true, they end up turning people into who they are.”

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“It’s in those moments of admitting and accepting your own terribleness that you realize other people can be terrible too. And if they can be terrible too, then maybe they can be vulnerable too, caring too, and all the things that you are and hope to be.”

--- Go to your library and check this read out! * Reader’s Advisory: strong (curse words) language *

Heidi Y.