Narrative Loserdom

Reviewer: Kelsey
Author: Ryan Collins
Pages: 204
Format: Paperback
Rating: 7 out of 10

Summary (from GoodReads): Justin Taggart doesn’t know anything (about being a loser). He likes girls and plays sports and has some friends. Unfortunately his fear of rejection outweighs his ability to deal with these well. Mostly there’s Sterling, the girl of his dreams who knows how to stop his heart by not knowing he likes her. Another thing is trying to get money with Adam, who’s rich anyway so it’s more about hanging out. As for Justin, he makes ends meet by mowing people’s yards with Adam, and sometimes by breaking into vending machines and selling late-night cable programming to peers (also with Adam). But it’s not like he doesn’t feel bad about it, since Jesus died for his sins. School is pretty terrible with all the work and practice, but there are a few people there worth mentioning. Anyone who picks up his journal will be in for something, if they feel like getting through a lot of grammar and spelling problems. They’ll probably end up seeing that they shouldn’t have looked at it anyway, because this is someone’s private anthem of girls, grass, and loserdom.

My Take: So I really did enjoy this book. The characters were somewhat relatable (they would have been more, had I been a boy...). I enjoyed the almost short story format in each of the journal entries. They made it very easy to just pick up the book and read. We also always had enough detail to understand each character and follow each story line.

The best part for me, however, was the moment in each story where I had the "omg, why are they going to do this? It's so stupid." but really it was the funniest thing that I'd ever heard. I also wish that I could get away with as much as these boys do. I was really rooting for them though. They had some real adventures.

Final Thoughts: It was a very interesting book and I was excited to see what kind of trouble the boys would find themselves in next. It was good that they were just normal boys doing normal things. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves journal type stories or trouble making boys. You really get a glimpse into the brain of a teenage boy. I would definitely recommend it if you are a 10-16 year old boy (not that it's not good for girls!). It was good.