Thanks For The Trouble - Tommy Wallach

Genre: Contemporary, Romance
Pages: 276
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Release Date: 25/02/2016
Find The Author: Website
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“Was this story written about me?”

I shrugged.

“Yes or no?”

I shrugged again, finally earning a little scowl, which somehow made the girl even more pretty.

“It’s very rude not to answer simple questions,” she said.

I gestured for my journal, but she still wouldn’t give it to me. So I took out my pen and wrote on my palm.

I can’t, I wrote. Then, in tiny letters below it: Now don’t you feel like a jerk?

Parker Santé hasn’t spoken a word in five years. While his classmates plan for bright futures, he skips school to hang out in hotels, killing time by watching the guests. But when he meets a silver-haired girl named Zelda Toth, a girl who claims to be quite a bit older than she looks, he’ll discover there just might be a few things left worth living for.

Admittedly, when I when the blurb of this - a boy that never speaks and some snobby girl with a lot of money - I did roll my eyes. But I was intrigued enough to buy it. It was the right decision - despite so many things that should have gone wrong with this book, everything seemed to go right and I ever had that sad moment where I didn't want to close the last page at the end. This book is perfect for John Green fans.

It absolutely uses the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope but this time our character Zelda felt like a fully realised human being. She's an old soul who knows the history of the city but has never experienced what it is to be a teenager, while Parker has closed himself off from his peers, using his lack of speech as an excuse really, to avoid social situations. Both are dealing with their own unique grief and they help each other move on from that.

This book gets wonderfully strange fairly early on and adds a concept not often seen in contemporary romance. I'm a fan of strange hipster novels so wandering around Tea Rooms, visiting local museums and musing over Seurat paintings was completely up my alley. I can't wait to read more from this author!