Two things kept running through my head while I was reading this.

1. This is what it must be like to be inside a teenage boy’s head.

2. Teenage boys are jackasses. Hilarious, predictable, often meaning well but totally failing jackasses.

Will Carter is 14 and entering his freshman year of high school, and he is totally desperate to lose his virginity. Or at least kiss a girl. Or at least talk to a girl without his pesky stuttering problem acting up. He’s on the football team because he’s been playing since he was a kid, but his ADD keeps him from paying very close attention so he’s just not very good. His friends are those typical teenage boy friends who will have your back one second and then mock you mercilessly in front of the whole team the next. They’ve all got eternal foot-in-mouth disease, and it comes back to haunt them time and again through the course of this book.

Watch Carter and his friends screw up one relationship after another, embarrass themselves at sports practices, stuff seven or eight people in a two-seater car, run from the cops, get mocked in school and ultimately get just what they deserve – and, in some cases, just what they want.

CARTER FINALLY GETS IT is written in some of the most perfect voice I have ever read in a YA book. It’s like Nick Hornby without the angst. There’s a lot of older content here – some language, Carter’s obsession with boobs, some offscreen sex (not Carter), some drinking (again, not Carter – he thinks beer is gross). Mostly, though, this book is just hilarious. I LOVED it. Reading it reminded me of what I like about the HBO show ENTOURAGE: the guys are jackasses, but deep down they’ve got decent hearts. In the end, you root for them to win. I was rooting for Carter all the way.

Publisher: Hyperion

Pub Date: April 2009