Book Review: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews

Title: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Author: Jesse Andrews

Publisher: Amulet Books

Pages: 295

Publication date: March 1st 2012

My rating: 5/ 5 stars

Synopsis:

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. 

 (taken from goodreads)

Review:

There are a lot of funny books out there within the Young Adult Literature. Funny and comical books are pretty expanse in terms of quantity. However, I find it quite difficult to read a book that's genuinely funny. I'm talking big fat happy tears and oxygen shortage from laughing so much. Those books that make you go "I'm really glad that I picked this up". Well, this book was all of that and more to me.

Let me start off by saying that I was seriously mislead when people kept telling me "oh that's a cancer book" when I asked them what the book was about. I picked it up with that mindset in mind and was consequently very pleasantly surprised to see that the book is actually a lot more than just a "cancer book". Actually, I don't really consider this to be a "cancer book" at all. To me it was more about the main characters life and his senior year of high-school experience. After finding out that his old friend, Rachel is diagnosed with Leukemia, Greg's mom forces him to hang out with her. Greg isn't too keen on the idea, but after a while he realizes that he actually likes spending time with her. 

Here's the thing about this book: it doesn't really have an order. And by this I mean that there is like a ton of back-story. Greg, the main character, tells us a lot about his past experiences, mainly about school, but also about life in general. Hes a bit of a misfit with only a couple of friends although he tries his best to remain on good terms with every social group in school. He was a really awesome main character and a really hilarious one too. He provides a lot of info on his best friend, Earl whom is also a great character and just as funny too. I found myself laughing a lot at the things he said and did. Overall the characters were amazing in their own quirky ways. Especially Rachel. I found her to be so cool and witty! And the way she handled her being sick and everything was pretty cool and anew take on the whole cancer spectrum. 

Something that was totally note-worthy about this book was the writing. The author incorporated a lot of different writing styles, like for example, a lot of the dialogue was written in  film-script style.  Which I guess was there purely because of the two main character's interest in films and film -making. That played a big part in the story so yeah. Anyway, it was completely new and different to me and I really appreciated it's singularity. Also,a lot of the time, the author referred to the reader and it was sort of like he knew exactly what I was thinking and it was wonderful. 

This book was highly entertaining and I would recommend it to absolutely everyone! Also, if Jesse Andrews were to write another book, I would definitely read it. 

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