My Most Excellent Year: A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins, and Fenway Park by Steve Kluger

My Most Excellent Year: A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins, and Fenway Park by Steve Kluger

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Goodreads Synopsis:

A funky collection of instant messages, emails, essays, and more takes this hilarious and complex young adult novel to a completely different place than the usual romance-coming out-theater-baseball novel.
Classmates T.C., Augie, and Alejandra each have different passions: the Red Sox, musical theater, and acting. They uproariously combine in friendship, love, and a quest to make a special addition to Manzanar, the famed Japanese internment site. Throw in a little Mary Poppins, and things really turn upside-down!

Narrators include Eileen Stevens, Ben Rameaka, Jeremy Beck, Peter Ganim, Christian Rummel, Kevin Pariseau, Khristine Hvam, Gayle Hendrix, Allyson Johnson, Marc Vietor, and Jay Snyder.

My Review:

This book was so sweet and so innocent (and somewhat unbelievable).



It was still a decent read though. I liked the three main characters enough, T.C., Ale, and Augie, but I found them highly unbelievable. They were way too mature for their age and life was a little too perfect for them. I can understand one character being too mature, but all three? Despite having a spoonful of sugar, this was still a little difficult to swallow.



We examine their year through texts, instant messages, phone calls, emails, journal entries, letters, etc. which was a clever way at telling the story. Although, it had a lot more potential then was utilized, which is a bummer.



T.C. was cute and smart, but tried really hard to not show it (his smarts, not his looks). He was good at sports, and he pretty much had it all. I liked that he loved his "brother" no matter what and how he befriended Hucky. That was super sweet and that relationship had the ending I was hoping for. Hucky was amazing. He was a dreamer who had not let his circumstances dictate his attitude for him. I enjoyed T.C.'s relationship with everyone, his deceased mom, his father, Augie's parents, his Brother, Hucky, Ale, his Student Adviser, etc. Was there anyone he didn't have a perfect relationship with? Other than his mother dying at an early age, I was hoping to see how he overcame a little hardship.

Augie was fabulous, his words, not mine. His story was not so much about "coming out" as it was his first love. Apparently, he was so obvious he didn't have to let anyone know, everyone just already knew. I'm all about equality and it shouldn't matter anyone's anything (gender, age, orientation, race, class, etc.) but I have a hard time believing that in this day and age of bullies that it was just accepted. The hardest thing he had to deal with was whether or not his boyfriend love him. I am glad he knew who he was from the beginning though and didn't change for anyone.

Ale was a pain in the butt. She lead T.C. around on a leash before giving him the proper time of day. She was somewhat full of herself and despite her trying to say she didn't, she flaunted her status around quite a bit. She did grow as a person once she started acting, and became a much more likable person when she stood up to her parents and told them about her dreams.

Don't get me wrong, this was a nice fluffy story to read. I'm not sure I'd recommend it, but if you do, I'd recommend reading it versus listening on audiobook.



P.S. I'm a hard-core New York Yankees fan. Normally our rivalry is with T.C.'s favorite team, the Boston Red Sox. I don't discriminate or talk down to those fans or about the team, but it does bother me when they talk bad about my team. Not cool dude! Go Yanks!



Favorite Quotes:

“Even though I didn't notice it while it was happening, I got reminded in ninth grade of a few things I guess I should have known all along.
1. A first kiss after five months means more than a first kiss after five minutes.
2. Always remember what it was like to be six.
3. Never, ever stop believing in magic, no matter how old you get. Because if you keep looking long enough and don't give up, sooner or later you're going to find Mary Poppins. And if you're reall lucky, maybe even a purple balloon.”

“. . . it's not just the people we love, but the people we let love us back who show us how high we can really soar.”

“Romance is a universally unspoken language understood by all living organism on this planet except heterosexual men.”

“Here's to us. Who's like us? Damn few.”

Read from April 20 to 29, 2015

Top 5 Genres*: Young Adult, Fiction, Romance, Realistic Fiction, GBLT
*According to Goodreads
_________________________
My ratings system
5 stars - I absolutely loved it
4 stars - Good book and would recommend
3 stars - Decent book, but wasn't spectacular
2 stars - Not good, but was able to finish it
1 stars - Did not finish (DNF) and I don't usually rate a book I haven't finished (just to be fair to the author)

View all my reviews