Spontaneous

by Aaron Starmer

I got sucked in by the John Green quote (whom I love), but this book didn't do it for me.

Original, yes. I can't say I've ever read anything like SPONTANEOUS. The writing is good and very conversational. My only issue with the writing is that despite being told from a girl's POV, it felt like a guy was writing it (if that makes sense. I've read plenty of male authors writing this way, John Green's FIOS for example, that believably pulled off a female POV, but this didn't for me).

It's such a weird idea, kids spontaneously exploding, but the actual narrative here is on the boring side. Mara has a very random way of thinking, and she's prone to tangents and flashbacks that don't do much. The whole book has a meandering feel to it. Pretty much every named character gets a few pages of context and backstory, and considering that there are probably a few dozen (or more) named characters in SPONTANEOUS, it kills what little momentum there was to begin with.

There's a romance of a sort, but like everything else in this book, I was left feeling pretty indifferent by it. Maybe that's my real problem here: I didn't care about Mara or any of the many, many other characters that wandered on or off the page. I didn't find the humor all that humorous either, dark or otherwise. I don't know. The other early reviews are all very positive, so maybe this is just not the book for me. Give it a try if the other reviews intrigue you.