Be More Chill by Ned Vizzini

Gut Instinct Rating - 2

Story Line - 5

Writing Style - 4

Characters - 3

Excitement Factor - 2

Believability for type and topics - 2

Similarity to other books - 5

Dust Jacket Art - 3

Title Relevance - 3

Goodreads users gave this book a 3.68. I think it was more deserving of a 3.22.

Emoji Meter: 😶 🙄 😴

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Published in 2014.

Pages: 287.

Number of books by author: 17.

Genre: YA Fiction.

Let me start off by saying that Vizzini's "It's Kind of a Funny Story" rejuvenated my love for books when I was in junior high and it helped me to feel comfortable with depression (as far as openness goes and not feeling shame). So, maybe my expectations for this book were a bit higher than they should've been...

My gut instinct rating was a 2. I think the only reason I finished this book is because I wanted to believe it would get better. That somehow, Vizzini was screwing with us in some way. But it just never got better. Everything about it felt very immature, maybe premature is a better word, but it just hit a plateau and there wasn't really a climactic point.

The characters were probably a huge part of the problem. When discussing popularity, it's a give-in that everyone is trying to achieve the same things - interests, hobbies, personality, appearance. And in this case, it made the book really boring. We had some of the characters who weren't King/Queen of the school, but in general, this was just a really distasteful choice of character molding. Everyone had the same voice, even if there were slight differences in voice, it was obvious that each character was intended to be of the same clique.

The believability just wasn't there. I felt like I was supposed to be reading about something that was somewhat plausible based on the note at the end to google squip. But, not much came up regarding personality enhancers. The book just felt too forced and I would've much rather seen the characters use a personality enhancer for something more productive than getting laid.

While it was unique, it still didn't really provide anything more than boy wants popular girl, boy tries to be popular, boy gets girl (maybe).

The writing style was so juvenile. It was clear that profanity wasn't admired by the editors since every use of curse words ended up reading something like: oh __c_, I forgot my _h_t in the car. It became very annoying, very quickly. I would've much rather just read, "oh crap, I forgot my stuff in the car." It may not be as lively, but it sure beats reading between the lines throughout the entire second half of the book. Aside from that, everything was basic. Descriptions were neutral - nothing too elaborate, but enough to present a picture. The book was certainly written for a younger YA audience as opposed to an older audience.

There was virtually no excitement in this entire book. I was somewhat surprised considering how much "stuff" happened in IKOAFS. Granted, these are different books, but there was just nothing real momentous happening. I was just bored, which probably contributed most to the low score.

The story line was enhanced already - this was a typical boy meets girl, boy falls in love scenario. It was given some extra -mmph- by way of separating the high class from the lower class (at least speaking in terms of cliques), and then the most heavily impacted change was the use of squip. That being said, it ended abruptly, so I would've liked to see something more there at the end, but the story line itself doesn't have much room for error on this one.

The title was fine. The phrase wasn't used often enough for me to think it had enough importance. I probably would've been happier with Squip as the title, but "Be More Chill" satisfies the book's purpose. The artwork on the dustjacket was a bit strange. It was "fine," simply because I don't know what the objective was. There were other dust jackets/editions that had better art, so I'm not sure if that was the only change or if other changes followed.