If the world wasn't filled with so many incompetent people, Teddy would have so much more time to concentrate on the important things. Like teaching.
Teddy Crutcher has just been awarded Teacher of the Year, and it is well-deserved. He always challenges his students to be the best they can be, even if he has to resort to unconventional methods. After all, isn't that why these students pay so much money to go to Belmont Academy?
Right off the bat, this felt like a compulsive read. It was easy to get sucked into the story and to keep turning the pages. With its short chapters, I felt like I could always read just a few more pages, and the outrageous happenings kept me constantly guessing and surprised.
However, this is definitely a book that prioritizes its shock factor above everything else. In particular, the characters are very thinly-sketched, with everyone being some form of crazy, but that is their only real personality trait. As a result, they don't feel fully formed, and I had trouble caring about them. Their crazy actions started to feel random, as if you could swap them between characters and still have the story make the same amount of sense.
Reading this genre can sometimes feel like you're witnessing a race in which books compete to outdo one another in the sheer insanity of their characters and happenings. And because we've seen it all by this point, books have to be ever more outrageous to shock us. And this book definitely deserves to be at the top of that pile.
It's a good one to pick up if you're in the mood for a diversion, and I certainly had fun with it. But with its shallow characterizations and fairly superficial storylines, everything is already starting to blur together only hours after finishing it.
Readaroo Rating: 3 stars
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