Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews

Up until senior year, Greg has maintained total social invisibility. He only has one friend, Earl, and together they spend their time—when not playing video games and avoiding Earl’s terrifying brothers— making movies, their own versions of Coppola and Herzog cult classics. Greg would be the first one to tell you his movies are f*@$ing terrible, but he and Earl don’t make them for other people. Until Rachel. Rachel has leukemia, and Greg’s mom gets the genius idea that Greg should befriend her. Against his better judgment and despite his extreme awkwardness, he does. When Rachel decides to stop treatment, Greg and Earl make her a movie, and Greg must abandon invisibility and make a stand. It’s a hilarious, outrageous, and truthful look at death and high school by a prodigiously talented debut author. Praise for Me and Earl and the Dying Girl STARRED REVIEW “One need only look at the chapter titles (“Let’s Just Get This Embarrassing Chapter Out of the Way”) to know that this is one funny book.” –Booklist, starred review STARRED REVIEW “A frequently hysterical confessional...Debut novelist Andrews succeeds brilliantly in painting a portrait of a kid whose responses to emotional duress are entirely believable and sympathetic, however fiercely he professes his essential crappiness as a human being. Though this novel begs inevitable thematic comparisons to John Green's The Fault in Our Stars (2011), it stands on its own in inventiveness, humor and heart.” –Kirkus Reviews, starred review “It is sure to be popular with many boys, including reluctant readers, and will not require much selling on the part of the librarian.” –VOYA "Mr. Andrews' often hilarious teen dialogue is utterly convincing, and his characters are compelling. Greg's random sense of humor, terrible self-esteem and general lack of self-awareness all ring true. Like many YA authors, Mr. Andrews blends humor and pathos with true skill, but he steers clear of tricky resolutions and overt life lessons, favoring incremental understanding and growth." –Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Award: Capitol Choices 2013 - Noteworthy Titles for Children and Teens Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC) Choices 2013 list - Young Adult Fiction YALSA 2013 Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers YALSA 2013 Best Fiction for Young Adults

Not as good as FiOS, but had some dead funny one liners delivered by the audio book cast. Have had kids love it, so it's an easy book to sell, especially with a movie tie-in. Will be interested to watch now and see the interpretation

“Also, what the hell does “weird even mean? I've just written it like five times and all of a sudden I'm staring at it and it doesn't even mean anything anymore. I just murdered the word “weird.” Now it's just a bunch of letters. It's like there's all these dead bodies all over the page now.”

I absolutely loved the style of this book. I loved how Greg was talking to you the reader. I also loved the mix of lists, scripts, and “normal” writing. It really added to the uniqueness of this book. For me the best part of this book was the way in which it was written, but also the humor. There were so many lines in this book that had me giggling and laughing to myself. This is definitely not a book I would want to read in public, because I definitely would have gotten some strange looks.

In terms of actual plot, I appreciated that while this is a cancer book it did not focus on the cancer. Instead it was about the weird group that Greg, Earl, and Rachel formed as a result of Rachel's diagnosis. While I found it really improbable how their meeting and friendship came about, I loved the interactions from Greg's point of view on what happened. I loved that Greg didn't care what he said, his only goal was to make Rachel laugh and for a little bit of her day forget about her cancer.

But like I said this was not a cancer book, it wasn't even really about Rachel. We literally learn little to nothing about her by the end of the book. And while Greg admits this toward the end of the book, I would have liked to have learned more about her rather than the focus solely on Greg. This book was about Greg and his coming to “hang out” with Rachel. But these hang outs were mostly just Greg talking and making Rachel laugh. We don't actually learn about what Rachel likes to do and what she is like as a person.

My main issue with this book was the lack of depth of the characters. We have Rachel who is the “dying girl” who we learn little to nothing about even though she is in the title. Then we have Greg who while we know the most about him, I feel like he was a very easy character to dislike. And finally you have Earl, who is just the enigma of a stereotype. The characters in this story were flat and showed little to no growth throughout the book. I think the book would have been better if the characters were more fleshed out and we knew more about them, especially in Rachel's case.

As I said, the humor and writing were the strong aspect of this book and why I gave it such a high rating. While this is a book about a girl with cancer it really is not a “cancer book” and i appreciated that. I'm also really looking forward to the movie!

For the past few months, I've been hearing nonstop reviews for this book and the movie and so finally I said screw it and bought the book.

I was expecting this fantastically funny book, but I didn't find it. I had just heard too many great things about this book and I raised my expectations just a little too much.

List of things I just didn't like about this book: the humor thrown into the book, the formatting (there were parts where I loved it, but most of the time I felt like it was a cheesy/cheap way of getting out of things), the unrealistic “friendships”, and more

Don't get me wrong, there were things I loved about this book. Enough to give it a 3 star rating. Perhaps 3.5 stars.

However, 53% of the way into this book, I set it down and did something I never like to do. I went and watched the movie in hopes that it would make me more attached the the characters and the plotline. And oh my god that movie. Everything I hated about the book was transformed into something amazing in the film. The friendships and the characters and just everything just felt so real to me. And it reached a level of quirky I felt like the book just missed. That movie was fantastic, perhaps even a new favorite.

This is how you overcome the Manic Pixie Dream Girl
Trope. A character can be dying and be unpleasant, be difficult, and even be uninteresting. Some people come into your life and suck. That is how real life works.