Treasure Island!!! / Sara Levine

   If you look at the Goodreads page for this book, there are a lot of complaints about how the protagonist is just a straight-up awful person and ugh how can you read something with such an unlikeable main character? You know what? She really is awful and this book is so good. And if she wasn't awful, where would the story be? NOWHERE, that's where.

   SO, she (I am like 99% sure she remains nameless throughout the book) has a dead-end job and is generally malcontent and ends up reading Treasure Island instead of returning it to the library for her sister, like she said she would. Please note that this is the first in a series of escalating events showing that our heroine has a selfish disdain for the feelings of others (plus conceit and arrogance in spades).

   After reading Treasure Island and deciding that it has Changed! Her! Life! she swears to live by what she deems are the book's Core Values: boldness, resolution, independence, and horn-blowing. She stuffs this up so spectacularly badly. Instead of bold she is brutal, instead of independent she quickly becomes practically parasitic, instead of resolute she's aimless, although I guess she grabs onto horn-blowing pretty well. She spends the book generally messing up the lives of the people (and birds) around her, and convincing herself that it is they, not she, who are in the wrong.

   This book is absurd and darkly funny. It's ideal for reading when you're feeling directionless. It has this super earnest, heartfelt moment at the end and it doesn't feel forced. Even this person who is so awful to her boyfriend, her friends, her sister, her parents, her boss, and basically everyone else in her life has a chance to make herself better and while it takes a LOT to get to get to the point where you think that she has a chance to be okay, she still has a chance. A good read. Plus it has three exclamation points in the title, how can you go wrong?