Liam Geller is handsome. Well-dressed. Popular. Also: a perennial troublemaker. Always saying something that upsets his father, or getting himself into a scrape. Like hooking up with a girl on his father’s desk.
That’s what finally gets him booted. After almost eighteen years, Liam’s CEO dad has had enough and announces he’s being shipped off to his grandparents’ house in Nevada.
Liam doesn’t like his grandparents, and they don’t like him. So his mother arranges for him to stay with his aunt Pete. Actually, scratch that. Pete is his uncle, his dad’s brother, but Liam thinks of him as “Aunt Pete” because of the time he showed up for dinner in a red dress. The time his dad lost it and then stopped speaking to Pete.
Right. So popular, cool Liam Geller moves into Pete’s trailer and antics ensue as Liam attempts to become unpopular. Uncool. Smart. He even puts pens into his shirt pocket, but nothing seems to work. He is cursed with the gift of popularity.
K.L. Going’s most recent book is a masterpiece: funny, smart, moving. It’s the kind of book you can relate to even if you, like me, were never a popular boy.
I previewed this book several months ago, and when I re-read it yesterday I remembered that it was something that deserved a review right away. So if you haven’t read it already, go check it out.
PS. Going, like so many other YA authors, makes us think about classic literature a we read teen lit. Maybe we’re trying to escape from reading, say, Hamlet, but Going won’t let us get away with that. So when you go out and pick up King of the Screwups, get yourself a copy of Hamlet to go along with it. Just in case.