Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews

Greg Gaines is the last master of high school espionage, able to disappear at will into any social environment. He has only one friend, Earl, and together they spend their time making movies, their own incomprehensible versions of Coppola and Herzog cult classics.

Until Greg’s mother forces him to rekindle his childhood friendship with Rachel.

Rachel has been diagnosed with leukemia—-cue extreme adolescent awkwardness—-but a parental mandate has been issued and must be obeyed. When Rachel stops treatment, Greg and Earl decide the thing to do is to make a film for her, which turns into the Worst Film Ever Made and becomes a turning point in each of their lives.

And all at once Greg must abandon invisibility and stand in the spotlight. @goodreads

MY REVIEW:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1371117842             4 STARS

 I certainly didn't expect this book to crack me up! During the first of the book when Greg was explaining high school I thought I was going to have a stroke and laughing so hard I had all of my parts hurting!

*EXCERPT FROM BOOK*

Basically, being a senior means that when people throw things at your teeth, it's accidental. In other words, being a senior is awesome.

All morning before school, and then all day, that was how things went. It was kind of a perfect day in that regard. I spent a few minutes in the parking lot with a gaggle of ill-tempered foreign kids led by Nizar the Surly Syrian, then exchanged some hellos with the soccer team, and this year none of them tried to grab and injure my nipples. Dave Smeggers, noted stoner, began telling me a long and excruciatingly pointless story about his summer, but was soon distracted by some birds, at which point I made my escape. Vonta King tried to get me to sit with him across from room 318, so I pretended I was on my way to a meeting with a teacher, and he accepted it without argument. And so on and so forth. Also, at one point I almost walked into one of Madison Hartner's boobs. Her boobs are about at eye level for me.

*END OF BOOK EXCERPT*

I thought Greg and Earl's friendship was great if not a bit over-the-top, but who's isn't when they are young :)

I'm not sure if Greg's mom should have pushed him to go and visit Rachel. They were sort of friends when they were kids, but he didn't seem too keen on seeing her now that she's the dying girl. He seemed really remote from the whole thing, but he did express these feelings in the book and felt bad about them.

I do like that sharing some of Greg and Earl's video's and antics made Rachel laugh and feel good. It doesn't seem she really had a life growing up.

Greg seemed to have a lot of issues of his own about the world and I'm not sure if he actually had real problems with himself mentally or what. You have to meet his dad though, I think all of the cheese fell off his cracker as well. He was some kind of a hoot. His mom was a dictator and never seemed to listen to what anyone said. It was funny reading Greg and her talking over each other. I just got an image of Lynn from Bob's Burgers! :) Greg's two sisters don't make too many appearances in the book. They are just younger and stomp around a lot :)

Poor ole Earl's family I won't even go into. They cracked me up when they got going, but it was really a sad situation.

Overall I liked the book and I thought it was funny and sad. And there you have it, one more opinion goes out into the world!

Fin :)