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2021-02-16 09:38 pm

Spontaneous by Aaron Starmer

Spontaneous by Aaron Starmer

3/5. Snarky teenager recounts her senior year of high school, as members of her class begin, one at a time, to spontaneously explode in sudden and bloody fashion.

Gorey, funny, sad. The narrator is so authentically asshole teenager that I had to cover my eyes a lot. You'd probably enjoy this more if you are an asshole teenager yourself or fond of them. I, being neither, found her pathological self-centeredness a lot to take, but that's part of the point of the book. It tells you up front, this is the story of how a series of unpredictable and uncontrollable awful things happened to the people around her for the purpose of her telling you how that changed her. That's it. I enjoyed it, though that was sometimes despite this book rather than because of it (too much absurd in addition to too much asshole teenager).

Content notes: Bloody deaths, vague references to sexual assault.