Review

I’m in mood for a bullet list, are you?

1. For once, the book started exactly where it ended: Greg third-wheeling Rowley and Abigail. This book starts with the same premise in mind, which I loved.
2. I liked this book the most, in terms of story-telling and character growth (because let’s face it, the humour, and the doodling is always on point). I couldn’t stop but notice that Greg is choosing to do the right thing: of being nice to help Fregley by rescuing him for the end of waiting-line to the school cafeteria to not confronting his mother about the monkey stash. And most importantly, not using his “something very expensive” find when he knows that it would tear the family apart.
3. This book also surprised me because neither Susan nor Manny wanted me to rip their heads off. That’s unusual, right? Right?
4. I liked Greg’s personal take on his friendship with Rowley, he regrets losing Rowley to Abigail, and not having a friend AT ALL, to realizing that sooner or later Rowley and himself would drift apart because “enough is enough”. If that’s not growth, I don’t know what is.
5. Greg doesn’t cheat, worked hard, didn’t buy a science project realizing “there’s no turning from such kind of things. Seriously, do I need to repeat: Growth! So much growth!
6. I also liked the line when Greg talks about him being nice and people mooching off it: story of my life, right? A few days ago, somebody presented my work, that I did over a couple of months, as their own, without so much as “Shabana did all of this work, I’m only demoing it”. It hurt, sure, and made me relate to Greg, even though our circumstances are poles apart.

Final Thoughts