32. Special Topics in Calamity Physics

By Marisha Pessl (540 pp)

I don't know what to tell you about this book. It's about a young woman in high school who lives with her dad who is complicated and possibly up to something. She becomes part of a group of friends that are under the spell of a secretive instructor and they get into all kinds of situations. At times, I enjoyed the writer's writing style. But for huge passages, it was too much. Here's a random paragraph:

He was looking at me intently with his I’m-Thumbing-a-Lift-Here look, which soon slipped into his Please-Pull-a-Ripcord face, and then, If-You-Would-Be-So-Kind-as-to-Administer-a-Rabbit-Punch. Normally, he reserved those faces for instances when a June Bug with some sort of physical deformity was actively pursuing him, like a faulty sense of direction (extreme nearsightedness) or an erratic wing (facial tic).

There were times when this would go on for pages and I would just slide my eyes over the words. There were other parts that were hard to put down. I liked the main character but her story was unsatisfying for me.