The Great American Whatever

From the award-winning author of Five, Six, Seven, Nate! and Better Nate Than Ever comes "a Holden Caulfield for a new generation" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

Quinn Roberts is a sixteen-year-old smart aleck and Hollywood hopeful whose only worry used to be writing convincing dialogue for the movies he made with his sister Annabeth. Of course, that was all before--before Quinn stopped going to school, before his mom started sleeping on the sofa...and before the car accident that changed everything.

Enter: Geoff, Quinn's best friend who insists it's time that Quinn came out--at least from hibernation. One haircut later, Geoff drags Quinn to his first college party, where instead of nursing his pain, he meets a guy--okay, a hot guy--and falls, hard. What follows is an upside-down week in which Quinn begins imagining his future as a screenplay that might actually have a happily-ever-after ending--if, that is, he can finally step back into the starring role of his own life story.

BUY THE BOOK

304 pages

Average rating: 6.8

5 RATINGS

|

1 REVIEW

Community Reviews

kinugawa
Aug 26, 2024
6/10 stars
This was a fun read, and the author was hilarious. I found myself laughing out loud many times, and reading out certain lines to my sisters because of the witty dialogue. It's written in first person, so most of the humor comes from the protagonist's thoughts and observations of the world, though there is real heart there as well. I remember crying at a certain point towards the end, so it did get me emotionally (not that that's hard. I cry easy with books and movies ok).

I can't really say why I give this 3 stars and not something higher. There's nothing wrong with it, I fundamentally like a lot of what was going on, but it just didn't go any further than that for me. I don't know.

See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.