Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Title: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Author: Jesse Andrews
Pages: 295
Publication: March 2012

Summary: Greg Gaines is the last master of high school espionage, able to disappear at will into any social environment. He has only one friend, Earl, and together they spend their time making movies, their own incomprehensible versions of Coppola and Herzog cult classics.

Until Greg’s mother forces him to rekindle his childhood friendship with Rachel. Rachel has been diagnosed with leukemia—-cue extreme adolescent awkwardness—-but a parental mandate has been issued and must be obeyed. When Rachel stops treatment, Greg and Earl decide the thing to do is to make a film for her, which turns into the Worst Film Ever Made and becomes a turning point in each of their lives.

And all at once Greg must abandon invisibility and stand in the spotlight.

My Thoughts: Greg Gaines is a boy of many flaws.  He's overly self-deprecating, not self-aware, can't take a compliment to save his life, and not to mention a tad selfish.  And you know how whenever a character does something stupid and you get secondhand embarrassment from just reading about that stupid something? Yeah, that's very prevalent in this novel when it comes to Greg Gaines.  That's not to say he doesn't eventually win you over, though, because that does happen. Eventually.

For the first third of the book, I found myself either laughing at the witty writing or skipping over the massive info-dumps of background about Greg, Earl, and even sometimes Rachel (aka the dying girl). With these info-dumps came stories of how Greg did something stupid or was at a loss for a socially acceptable response to a question and sometimes it was funny, however other times it got a little annoying when these ridiculous responses would take pages to end and you're just cringing because of it.

Other than that, I did think this was a funny book. It was witty and enjoyable from beginning to end. But don't go into this book thinking, "Hey! I'm going to read this because someone is going to fall in love with the dying girl! Right?" Wrong. It's not a romantic book at all. It's a book about friendships, figuring out what it's like to start thinking about others, making better life decisions. At least, I think that's what it's about.

I say that because you can get all kinds of morals from this story and you can learn a lot from Greg's mistakes, like he eventually does himself.  Also, if you like a fair amount of cussing, bad movie remakes, and 12 year old boy level kind of humor, then this book is made for you. It's your soul mate. Pick it up, give it a nice ceremony it's been dreaming of since it was just a picture book, and marry it. You are no doubt bound to love it.
My Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars