Review of Happy Birthday To Me by Brian Rowe

Seventeen-year-old Cameron Martin has a huge problem: he’s aging a whole year of his life with each passing day!

High school is hard enough; imagine rapidly aging from seventeen to seventy in a matter of weeks, with no logical explanation, and with prom, graduation, and the state championship basketball game all on the horizon. That’s what happens to Cameron, a popular pretty boy who's never had to face a day looking anything but perfect.

All Cameron wants to do is go back to normal, but no one, not even the best doctors, can diagnose his condition. When he finds love with a mysterious young woman, however, he realizes his only hope for survival might be with the one person who started his condition in the first place...

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I'd seen this one around a lot a few months ago so when I got an opportunity to review it, I jumped at the chance. A story about someone who ages a year every day? Sounds fantastic! It was just as good as I hoped too – the narrative is simple but effective, the plot runs along smoothly and not too slowly (or too fast!) and the ending nearly made me cry. Nearly! I enjoyed watching the different characters develop and change throughout, which strangely enough doesn't happen that often in YA books. Cameron had the most development of course, mentally as well physically. He started off as a typical jock, pretending it was his birthday just to get free cake and as the story progressed went from one extreme to the other – learning the error of his ways and trying to make changes to getting violently drunk and crashing his Prom.

The characters in this were all rather odd. Wes, Cameron's friend was about the most normal, as well as Ryan, Cameron's teammate, whereas the rest of them seem to get Cameron in some pretty bizarre situations. I feel the need to mention Cameron's father in particular here. Oh my gosh, what on Earth was going on with him? The things he tried to do to Cameron were unrealistic and highly unbelievable, yet all the rest of the story seemed believable (believe it or not), and that made him even weirder. Then there was THAT situation with Cameron's mother and I don't even want to get into a conversation about what happened with his teacher (Water For Elephants anyone?). Weird.

One thing in particular I loved was the chapter headers, each telling you how old Cameron's age was at that time. So if it'd been a couple of days, you'd know pretty quickly. All in all this is a fantastically fun book and I can't wait to read the even more bizarre sounding sequel, Happy Birthday to Me Again – plus the third part, Happy Birthday to You is now available as of the 4^th December!

5/5