Books In Her Head: Life In Outer Space and Stacking The Shelves

Review

Title: Life In Outer Space

Author: Melissa Keil

Publisher: Peachtree Publishers

Publication Date: August 1st, 2013

Format: Library Copy

Genre: YA; Contemporary; Geekish

Rating: ✎✎✎✎

Okay, so if you haven't read this book, read above and below!

Blurb:

Sam is a geek movie-buff with a ragtag group of loser friends who have been taking abuse from the popular kids for years. But when the super-cool Camilla moves to town, she surprises everyone by choosing to spend time with Sam's group. Suddenly they go from geek to chic, and find that not everything boils down to us and them. With their social lives in flux, Sam and Camilla spend more and more time together. They become the best of friends, and Sam finds that he's happier and more comfortable in his own skin than ever before. But eventually Sam must admit to himself that he's fallen in love. If he confesses his true feelings to Camilla, will everything change again?

If you haven't read this book stop here! :)

My Thoughts and Reflection:

This aussie book has sort of a typical geek-contemporary premise; cool girl joins geek group, geek guy likes girl, but does she like him back? This book stood out a little from it's twin geek-contemporaries because of the flaws in the characters. Our protagonist is Sam Kinnison, and he is a horror movie freak who can't seem to write the screen play that he's dreamed of. I've found that movie geeks are kind of an under appreciated group and more books should be written about them, because the are awesome and there are SO many different types of movies; thus, different types of movie geeks. But anyway, moving away from my movie geek rant, Sam is not perfect. He is smart, but not always the best friend. He loves movies, but is out of place talking about other things. And his family life kind of sucks. No, it just plain sucks. Then here comes Camilla, the cool, sophisticated nomad who lives with her rock star dad and–hold up, she's got some problems too, it just takes Sam so long to see it. Sam's relationships with the other characters and friends is endearing, as well as dealing with the fact that Camilla is friends with the popular group too. With that little aspect Sam is sort of immature and needs to get a grip, I mean, yeah they were jerks and mean, but it wasn't like they made his life total hell. I don't know, it just felt like he needed to man up and accept that people can change. The plot of this book wasn't exactly exhilarating, but the characters were all so endearing that you felt obligated to follow along with their lives. I find it similar to how Emma over at Spun With Words described Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. The end was cute a sweet, but entirely not surprising. I would have liked if this book had some other aspect to it; I'm not sure whether it's a mystery, more action, or something. The only other side-plot is the problems with Sam's best friend Mike, but it's not really a sub-plot because Mike disappears for the middle chunk of the book. While that has an explanation, it just makes it hard to categorize Mike's life as a true sub-plot, leaving this book completely sub-plotless, and unsatisfying. I rated this book four pencils because 1. The characters were quirky and unique 2. I love books set in Australia, 3. Three, the plot was sweet and 4. The writing was engaging. However, despite these positives I found that the book was missing something and was unfulfilled.

Anyway, I did get to take a trip to a local book store (Support local businesses!!!) this weekend and I snagged a few books from the library this week. I got this haul: