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Published Aug 2016
368 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
A darkly funny and spectacularly original exploration of friendship, goodbyes - and spontaneous combustion.
Mara Carlyle's senior year is going as normally as could be expected, until - wa-bam! - fellow senior Katelyn Ogden explodes during third period pre-calc.
Katelyn is the first, but she won't be the last teenager to blow up without warning or explanation. As the seniors continue to pop like balloons and the national eye turns to Mara's suburban New Jersey hometown, the FBI rolls in and the search for a reason is on.
Whip-smart and blunt, Mara narrates the end of their world as she knows it while trying to make it to graduation in one piece. It's an explosive year punctuated by romance, quarantine, lifelong friendship, hallucinogenic mushrooms, bloggers, ice cream trucks, "Snooze Button™," Bon Jovi, and the filthiest language you've ever heard from the President of the United States.
Aaron Starmer rewrites the rulebook with Spontaneous. But beneath the outrageous is a ridiculously funny, super honest, and truly moving exemplar of the absurd and raw truths of being a teenager in the 21st century ... and the heartache of saying goodbye.
"Starred Review. A blood-soaked, laugh-filled, tear-drenched, endlessly compelling read." - Kirkus
"[Starmer] adeptly uses his bloody, madcap premise to heighten just how much of life is out of our control, and how important it is to seize whatever time we're given." - Publishers Weekly
"Aaron Starmer skillfully welds sharp humor, deep loss, and roaring escapades. Truly the smartest and funniest book about spontaneous combustion you will ever read." - John Green, #1 bestselling author of The Fault In Our Stars
This information about Spontaneous was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Aaron Starmer is the author of numerous novels for young readers, including The Only Ones and The Riverman. He lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter.
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