Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews

After being completely creeped out by "172 Hours on the Moon" I wanted to read something that was going to make me laugh.

A book with "Dying Girl" in the title? Really?!

Yup. The "author" (main character, Greg Gaines) sums it up best:

"I do actually want to say one other thing before we get started with the horrifyingly inane book.  You may have already figured out that it's about a girl who had cancer.  So there's a chance you're thinking, 'Awesome! This is going to be a wise and insightful story about love and death and growing up. It is probably going to make me cry literally the entire time.  I am so fired up right now.' If that is an accurate representation of your thoughts, you should probably try to smush this book into a garbage disposal and then run away...My point is this: This book contains precisely zero Important Life Lessons, or Little-Known Facts About Love, or sappy tear-jerking Moments When We Knew We Had Left Our Childhood Behind for Good, or Whatever."(p 2-3)

Awesome.

As promised, there were no real life lessons.  There was a whole lot of cursing (mostly by his crazy friend, Earl).  And it made me laugh out loud...a lot!!  Greg is dry, sarcastic, self-deprecating, and extremely funny. 

This really isn't a book about "the Dying Girl"...but much more about a teenage boy trying to navigate life in general.  I give it 4/5 on the Rez Recommends scale.

As a side note, if you are looking for a "wise and insightful story about love and death and growing up", you MUST read John Green's "The Fault in Our Stars".  I didn't review it on this site...mostly because I was too overwhelmed to write about it at the time.  It's brilliant.  Extraordinarly funny and smart.  And I cried my eyes out.  It's now at the top of the "Ms. Martin's Favourites" list over on the side.  As another reviewer put it, "I was undone by this novel."