There are three reasons I don’t buy new books:
1. They’re expensive.
2. People I know and love know that they can buy me books for any occasion and I will be grade A happy. If I don’t buy new books, there is little chance they will buy me a duplicate.
3. I read them too quickly.
My bookshelf essentially comprises of all books I haven’t read yet, which means I’ve been putting them off for one reason or another. A main reason is they’re mostly Adult books. Adult books are usually nuanced and require my Full Brain to read them. They also rarely have a completely satisfying and happy ending. Young Adult (YA) novels, however, are the often cheesy, simply written, happily-ended books I used to read way before I should have. Not that YA can’t address serious topics - in fact they often do, and do it beautifully - but they work hard to keep it easy to read. I loved them, but as I got older, they weren’t as satisfying. I stopped reading because the Adult books were too intimidating and the YA books were too easy.
Turns out, I’m an Adult. The books on my bookshelf only require 75% of my brainpower - but they still rarely end happily. Enter my hankering for some YA - I found bookoutlet.ca and their extremely low prices for books that I would typically pick up in the Chapters Bargain Book section and would be annoyed but not devastated when the book was bad because I’d only spent three dollars (I’m looking at you, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman) EXCEPT these books are good.
I decided to return to the YA genre that sparked my love on books all over again with some purchases. I’m glad I did.
I started with The Improbable Theory of Ana and Zak.
“It all begins when Ana Watson's little brother, Clayton, secretly ditches the quiz bowl semifinals to go to the Washingcon sci-fi convention on what should have been a normal, résumé-building school trip. If slacker Zak Duquette hadn't talked up the geek fan fest so much, maybe Clayton wouldn't have broken nearly every school rule or jeopardized Ana’s last shot at freedom from her uptight parents. Now, teaming up with Duquette is the only way for Ana to chase down Clayton in the sea of orcs, zombies, bikini-clad princesses, Trekkies, and Smurfs. After all, one does not simply walk into Washingcon. But in spite of Zak's devil-may-care attitude, he has his own reasons for being as lost as Ana - and Ana may have more in common with him than she thinks. Ana and Zak certainly don’t expect the long crazy night, which begins as a nerdfighter manhunt, to transform into so much more…”
I’ve always wanted to go to a convention - the ones with the costumes and panels and famous people - but I’ve never liked anything enough to spend hundreds of dollars on it. This book brought me there and I didn’t even have to leave my couch.
Ana and Zak could not be more different. She’s the Type-A quiz team captain, filling her resume with things she doesn’t like but that look good, and Zak is a geeky slacker who hides from his sporty step-father.
I was immediately pulled into the story by them both. I am a huge fan of switching perspectives each chapter if the characters are notably different, and I never once had to check whose chapter I was reading. This was a BIG WIN compared to the last book I read like this (see my review for Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List). Ana and Zak’s voices were clear, distinct, and fun. I also liked that neither of them were described as particularly attractive. Ugly people can be fun and flirt and be total badasses too, you know!
Okay. Everything that happens in this coffee-and-panic fueled race around the convention is ridiculous. There are fights and fire alarms and drugs. There is archery and singing and trivia. Brian Katcher dreamed up this crazy story and brought it to life perfectly - I laughed, stressed, and said “awww” right on cue. There was no nuance to what I was supposed to be feeling while I read it. It laid it right out - here is where we are going, and yes, it’s improbable - but not impossible.
The story takes place overnight, so it helped that I read it in one sitting between 11:30pm and 2:30am. My guard was down and the characters stormed the castle. Their convention-al (see what I did there) hate to love romantics offset their respective family drama nicely, and the side characters were textured just enough to be memorable but not steal the show.
There were a lot of references I didn’t understand, but many more that I did. Even with a cursory knowledge of video games and movies, I smiled once or twice (or maybe three or four or… you get the picture). It feels nice to be in the club, even if it’s a geeky one.
And it all gets tied up in a bow at the end. Not a fairy-tale ending bow, but a happy one nonetheless. It was exactly what I was looking for - so much so that I started another YA the next night.
4 stars. Cute, crazy, conventions.
Happy reading,
Holly
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