100 Sideways Miles by Andrew Smith

I’ve been reading a lot of paranormal/fantasy lately, so I decided to return to contemporary for this one. Andrew Smith is a new author for me. But I’m so obsessed with Winger. It is by far my favorite contemporary book with If I Stay close but still in a semi-distant second place. As for the actual book, the cover of 100 Sideways Miles is absolutely gorgeous, not to mention the beauty that is the back of the dust jacket. It is also a fairly short novel being under 300 pages. So a short read for me.

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This book did not disappoint at all. It was just as I expected full of Andrew Smith’s wit and humor. Finn as a character was great. He is a 16/17 year old, epileptic, with heterochromatic eyes (one blue and one green). He has a scar shaped like this :|: on his back after the falling horse accident. Finn’s dad also has a book that is strangely very similar to Finn’s life. This is a large part of the identity crisis that Finn goes through. He is not sure if he is really there or just stuck in a book. Finn is also very literal and bases everything off of atoms coming together and how much the Earth moved in the time elapsed. I really enjoyed the recurring mentions of atoms and these distances that were literally on every page. On top of this, Finn had also survived a traumatic event of being hit by a dead horse. This accident took his mom away and also broke his back leading to his epilepsy.

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The first part of this book is very introduction heavy. It is just over a hundred pages introducing us to Finn, Cade, and Julia. Not much else happens in terms of plot and development. Well, I guess Finn has his first kiss and falls in love. But there is not much else happening. It is in the second part that everything starts to change and happen. Cade and Julia fall in love and then she leaves. The third part consists of Cade and Finn going on their road trip to Oklahoma.

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This book did not have too much of a plot, it was more about Finn growing to accept himself and who he was post horse falling from the sky incident. This book while not was I was expected in terms of plot it was everything I wanted in an Andrew Smith book. Having now read two Andrew Smith books I think I can safely say he is one of my favorite writers, plus he has a way of ending his stories. Winger has one of my favorite last pages of all time and this book had just as memorable of an ending. 100 Sideways Miles is a fantastic book that really captivated me with its wit and seemingly pointless details that all connected to form this book. 

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ Stars!