“Did other people go to a school where nerds got beat up all the time? Because this seems to be a common thread in books and movies and television and all that. But after asking around, I don’t know anyone who went to a school where dorks were getting a semi-teacher-sanctioned beating on a regular basis.
Is it a thing of the past? Is this something that happened pre 90’s and then mysteriously disappeared?
Anyway, maybe it happened. It must be a lot of nerds and dorks who go on to write books and TV shows about being a nerd and a dork, so maybe there’s something to it. But I have my doubts.
As for the rest of the book, it was a little long and scattered. I mean, at fifteen I don’t think I had the attention range to both solve the mystery of my father’s mysterious death and solve the mystery of oral sex at the same time. That’s what the book felt like. It was like the dude would zip up his pants and then think, “Right, now back to the mystery of how my dad died.”
The ending, without spoiling it, felt like a very Scooby-Doo kind of ending. Ah, we’ve wrapped it all up in a bizarre package that doesn’t make sense. Not a nice package, like when your mom wrapped a shoebox. More like me trying to giftwrap a football. It’s gonna look like hell, but my only goal was to get the paper around the object, which I accomplished.
Oh, and PS, a kid who is getting blown at 15 may have to resign his status of King Dork. I don’t remember a lot about how these things work, but I remember that much.”