This Will Be Funny Someday
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel comes to high school in acclaimed author Katie Henry’s coming-of-age YA contemporary about a girl who accidentally falls into the world of stand-up comedy. Perfect for fans of John Green and Becky Albertalli!
Sixteen-year-old Izzy is used to keeping her thoughts to herself—in school, where her boyfriend does the talking for her, and at home, where it’s impossible to compete with her older siblings and high-powered parents.
When she mistakenly walks into a stand-up comedy club and performs, the experience is surprisingly cathartic. After the show, she meets Mo, an aspiring comic who’s everything Izzy’s not: bold, confident, comfortable in her skin. Mo invites Izzy to join her group of friends and introduces her to the Chicago open mic scene.
The only problem? Her new friends are college students—and Izzy tells them she’s one, too. Now Izzy, the dutiful daughter and model student, is sneaking out to perform stand-up with her comedy friends. Her controlling boyfriend is getting suspicious, and her former best friend knows there’s something going on.
But Izzy loves comedy and this newfound freedom. As her two parallel lives collide—in the most hilarious of ways—Izzy must choose to either hide what she really wants and who she really is, or finally, truly stand up for herself.
* Rise: A Feminist Book Project Book of the Year * A YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults Book of the Year *
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sixteen-year-old Isabel Vance isn't the wallflower everyone assumes her to be. While avoiding her overbearing boyfriend one afternoon, she unwittingly walks into a Chicago comedy club, where she ends up performing at an open mic. The challenge proves liberating: "I realize it then, with equal terror and boundless relief: they don't know me.... So I can be anything I want." Isabel's improvised stand-up set doesn't exactly kill, but the teen, who has an auditory processing disorder, earns her first laughs plus a trio of new friends. The catch? Her comedy chums think "Izzy V." is a 20-something college student just like them. Izzy gets a crash course in joke writing and learns to shut down heckling and harassment, onstage and off, but her lies eventually catch up with her. Henry's (Let's Call It a Doomsday) background as a playwright shines through the banter between Izzy and her fellow comics. It's a credit to the novel's realism that the teen's internal monologue and off-the-cuff remarks are often funnier than her scripted material showing how, as a budding performer, she's still honing her stand-up persona. Though Izzy is at times painfully naive, readers will enjoy watching her undergo the process of self-transformation, one punch line at a time. Ages 13 up.
