Not a book to skim if you want to enjoy all the asides along with all the literary and popular references. I love how Blue, the main character and narrator of the story, changes nouns into verbs as well as how she so aptly explains her feelings about someone and creates visuals by saying, "See..." referencing a book or an illustration. This novel is hard to categorize. Coming-of-age for sure, but also part mystery or even thriller--well, not quite that. The story isn't necessarily funny; Blue is still trying to deal with the death of a favorite teacher more than a year ago, and most people would not want to live her last year in high school--at least how she describes it--but Blue is always funny in a very intelligent, sardonic way that captivated me even as it was getting her in trouble.

An unusual book. Blue lives with her professor father, who decides that for her senior year, they'll stay in one place for the entire year rather than move around as normal. She's befriended by a teacher at the school who throws her in with a group of kids that hang out with her on the weekends. I can't even begin to describe the twists and turns that this book takes. I did really enjoy it. ( )

“As a Harvard freshman recounting the events of the previous year, when her childhood "unstitched like a snagged sweater," Blue remembers being thoroughly in thrall to her father, a political science professor who changes jobs at third-tier colleges so frequently that by age 16 she's attended 24 different schools. To compensate for this rootlessness (her lepidopterist mom died in a car crash when Blue was 5), Dad has promised his daughter an undisturbed senior year in the North Carolina mountain town of Stockton, where Blue will attend the ultra-preppy St. Gallway School.
It's at St. Gallway that Blue's dedication to her pompous, theory-spouting father begins to waver. Her attention is diverted by the school's most glamorous figures, a clique of five flighty kids called the Bluebloods who meet every Sunday night for dinner at the home of their mentor, Hannah Schneider, a charismatic film teacher.”(Washington Post, 2007).

It is not often that a book gets to me the way this one did. A few days into the reading I had a dream about the characters; this is how much I identified with Pessl’s book (yes this how her last name is spelled). The main character Blue Van Meer (I love this name!) and her father Garth remind me of my best friend in high school and her father (though they did not travel, rather her dad attracted many people to his world). Garth Van Meer is a laid back political professor who thinks rather highly of himself but has little regard for other people’s feelings, especially the women who come and go. Blue calls these women June Bugs as they are attracted to her father like a bug to a flame, and like bugs and flame, nothing good comes to these women. My friend Heidi’s dad would date women for sex, but when they wanted more he pushed them away without a thought about the feelings of these women. Garth Van Meer does the same.

The book takes place during Blue’s senior year at a preppy high school, and like many teens finds herself drawn to a group of her peers while pulling away from her dad. Reading the novel as Blue starts to see her dad in a new light just as she starts to rebel, got me thinking about the relationship between parent and child. It seems to me no matter how well we think we have raised our kids, they can be highly influenced by their peers. Years of careful parenting can be thrown out the window if our children fall under the spell of other kids. At some point in our relationship our children will stop seeing us as mom or dad and start seeing us as humans. This change can sometimes be painful, for Blue it is shattering.

The charismatic teacher Hannah Schneider seems at first to be the tragic figure in the novel, the reader is told in the beginning that she is found hanging from a tree. The story is about the events that led up to this suicide (or was it?). Again, it seems Hannah is the tragic figure, but as the book unfolds it becomes clear all the characters are tragic or damaged in some way.

Pessl manages to make five spoiled preppy teens sympathetic, though not always likable, not an easy task and not one that many first time writers can pull off. I never really cared about them, but I did understand them so what ends up happening makes their response believable. What is not believable is the final plot scenario. It is not that Pessl writes a twist; rather she brings the reader in a secret that is not only unbelievable, but leaves the reader asking questions. There are a couple of serious plot holes that make the ending feel forced and drags the book down. The other thing that drags the book down is Pessl incessant use of footnotes in the text (see redundant in any dictionary). At first the footnotes drive Pessl’s description but after awhile they start to wear on the reader and become a distraction.

This is Pessl’s first novel and though I had problems with the plot and her writing style I do hope she writes more books, minus the footnotes in quotations. I would not hesitate to read another by her. After all, it is not often I dream about fictional characters. ( )

How does one plan a book like this? To set a murder mystery (we have no idea it's a murder mystery except for some prescient comments along the way, until well into the story) in a clever high schooler's senior year, and make her not only solve the mystery, but suffer abandonment as a result! This exceedingly clever piece contains multiple cultural references on every page, most of them actually valid. We have a startlingly erudite high school senior, who falls in with a clique of charismatic and clever classmates and who is able to complete her senior year without benefit of parents.

The language in this fresh, engaging piece is what propels it along. We keep turning pages because we begin to care what happens to Blue, and Hannah, the enigmatic teacher who proctors the creative group along the way. But for all the throw-away culture and kids-playing-at-adulthood, we have a deathly story underneath, in which Hannah loses her life and Blue's Dad disappears the minute Blue figures it (almost all the way) out.

Ms. Pessl amazes with her multitudinous references, her deadpan delivery, and the reality of the angst her characters feel. This is a debut you should definitely pick up, and a career we should definitely follow. ( )

I liked this book. It was a good summer read. Cleverly written, although a wee bit pretentious. I highly recommend it. ( )