Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick

by Joe Schreiber

[rakesandrogues]

The first two things you’ll notice when picking this book up are: the crazy title and the ridiculously short length of the book. A novel called AU REVOIR, CRAZY EUROPEAN CHICK is just one of those books that begs to be picked up. It’s kind of hard to walk a way from a title like that and not wonder what it is about. Nowadays, it’s so common to pick up a 400-page young adult novel, so it was refreshing to pick up such a quick light read that you can really read in one sitting. AU REVOIR falls under a manageable 200 pages.

Opening the book, I was so delighted to find that each chapter starts off with a dreaded question from different college applications. I’m pretty sure that these questions came from actual applications. Why? Because I recognized one of them. :P It’s only been two years since I had to fill out those dreadful applications and those essay prompts are impossible to get out of your head. Each chapter does in fact answer an essay prompt, but some of it are a stretch. Still, it was fun to see which question would be next, and just exactly how a part of Perry’s night can be told in this fashion.

AU REVOIR reminded me of a blockbuster teen flick: a hot girl, semi-geeky guy, and lots of guns and explosions. It’s action-packed and fast-paced, but surprisingly, it wasn’t for me. I just couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that this foreign exchange student turns out to be a well trained assassin. It makes me wonder what is wrong with my imagination??? This totally could be such a fun book, if I could just get myself to believe that this can actually happen. But I couldn’t. And the magic of the book was lost.

And I guess there’s Gobi. Usually, I love an ass-kicking heroine (Katniss from The Hunger Games? Or Vampire Academy‘s Rose Hathaway?) but Gobi’s character just felt flat to me. I just couldn’t find anything to like about her. Even when I did find out why Gobi was assassinating all these people, I just couldn’t find myself to care. I guess she just came across as fake to me. I never felt that her character was genuine.

Which makes me want to face-palm at the fact that Perry just eats it all up. Of course, he’ll be so into her once she’s a really hot international spy. Gah, the “romance” in this book is kinda cheesy and reminds me once again of a blockbuster flick. There was little to no chemistry, but of course in the face of danger, the two characters in the book just have to get it on. (Okay, they don’t really get it on, but you know what I mean…).

I do think there is an audience for this book out there: high school seniors, like my sister, who are ready to tear their hair out from the amount of stress that comes with applying to college. The fun format of the novel will hopefully remind these teens to be daring when writing their applications. While it’s hard to top Perry’s, surely there’s a fun and exciting story that’s waiting to be told.

I love the format of this book, even if it brings back terrible memories of applying to college. I wish that the book was a little more believable and the characters a little more likeable.