Spontaneous
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4.1 • 14 Ratings
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
A high school senior gets an unwanted front row seat to the most absurd—and explosive—epidemic as it races across her New Jersey high school in this "wildly inventive" (Entertainment Weekly) coming-of-age dark comedy.
“Truly the smartest and funniest book about spontaneous combustion you will ever read.”—John Green, #1 bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars
“A blood-soaked, laugh-filled, tear-drenched, endlessly compelling read.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
Mara Carlyle’s senior year is going as normally as could be expected until—wa bam!—fellow senior Katelyn Ogden explodes during third period pre-calc.
Katelyn is the first, but she won’t be the last senior to blow up without warning or explanation. With the whole country watching, the FBI soon rolls into Mara’s suburban New Jersey hometown and the search is on for answers.
Whip-smart and blunt, Mara narrates the end of their world as she knows it while trying to make it to graduation in one piece. It’s an explosive year punctuated by romance, quarantine, lifelong friendship, hallucinogenic mushrooms, bloggers, ice-cream trucks, “Snooze Button™,” Bon Jovi, and the filthiest language you’ve ever heard from the president of the United States.
In Spontaneous, every rule is defied, but beneath the outrageous is a super honest and truly moving exemplar of the absurd and raw truths of being a teenager in the twenty-first century—and the heartache of saying good-bye.
The inspiration for the motion picture starring Katherine Langford, Charlie Plummer, and Hayley Law!
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Seniors at Covington High School are spontaneously combusting in one gloriously gory explosion after another, and it doesn't take long for the FBI to descend on the New Jersey town to figure out what is going on. Is it terrorism? A curse? At the heart of Starmer's story is Mara Carlyle, a senior who witnesses the first combustion up close in precalc. Mara's blunt, sarcastic narration is well-matched to the absurdity of the plot, and while it's tempting to think of it as a defense mechanism in response to an unbelievable situation, it seems clear that this is just who Mara is. Her lengthy internal monologues, while entertaining, can frustrate the story's momentum and make Mara seem more like an observer and chronicler of the mayhem, rather than a participant, despite her proximity to several of the explosions. This aside, Starmer (the Riverman trilogy) adeptly uses his bloody, madcap premise to heighten just how much of life is out of our control, and how important it is to seize whatever time we're given. Ages 14 up.
