Book Review -- Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong
Prudence Shen & Faith Erin Hicks
FirstSecond
May 2013

Even though they they are social opposites, Nate and Charlie have been best best friends since a young age, and together they’ve braved the high school world....until Nate runs for school president to get the money his team needs to go to a robotics competition. And Charlie’s former girlfriend, a cheerleader, has other ideas on where the money can go, and a battle ensues that puts Charlie in the middle of opposing groups, with somewhat disastrous and hysterical results.  When the school's money is put out of their reach, the two groups must put aside their differences and come together to win the biggest, baddest, robot competition of all time.

This is the first time I’ve read any of Prudence’s work and I’ve got to say I really, really enjoyed it.  In large part because the story focuses on two male friends and there just aren't that many books out there like this that don't make it so that the guys are in a competition for romance or have weird plot twists to them (like one of the guys being alien...or a girl.)  This book just captures that sense of being on opposite ends of the social spectrum, but still being able to be friends.  And even more importantly is that even though these guys are on opposite ends, its not made out to be a detriment and we never see anyone making fun of either character for hanging out with the other because one is a jock and the other is a geek.  Overall this was a just a nicely written story with some fun twists to it and excellent robot action.

I really like Faith's art style and it works well this story, as she just has this way of capturing teenager characters well as illustrated in her own book Friends With Boys.  In this book she again just captures the movements of teenagers well, that slightly cocky, yet unsure of themselves style of walking, talking, and even fighting.  They have a lot of depth to their expressions so that even without the words of the story you can tell what’s going on. Faith also has a way of capturing the feelings and movements of being in high school. That sense of being crowded and all alone at the same time. I especially love the robotic fights, and the expressions on the character’s faces as they battle it out.

I'd give this book 4 out of 5 stars, I’d recommend it to the male teenage population in both middle and high school. The story is engaging, fun characters, and best of all a great robot battle at the end.

ARC provided by Gina at FirstSecond