Carter Finally Gets It

Raunchy but heartwarming and absolutely hilarious. Somehow Crawford manages to get sympathy for this misogynistic dirtbag of a 14-year old character without it hinging on his ADD. Cracked me up!

John Green, of Paper Towns etc. fame, has the High School Boy voice all wrapped up, but for my money it's been a looong time since I've read anything as funny as Carter Finally Gets It. I would call this the Middle School Boy voice, perhaps, even though Carter is a freshman, but he is so totally hapless with the ladies and so completely earnest in his attempts to improve his game that he reminds me of every eighth grade boy I've heard over the past five years trying to Slyly Put The Moves On and failing miserably (or succeeding in spite of The Moves). Just LAUGH OUT LOUD funny. In one scene, he spends $30 to get a bootleg VHS copy of a porno that is stuck on fast-forward, and then accidentally leaves it running in the basement VCR, show more prompting his dad to patiently remind him that it might bother his mom to find it and ask, "Why did you forget to hide it?" to which Carter replies in deep truthfulness, "I don't know, Dad. I think I might be retarded."

Absolutely Ha Larious. Verging on too dirty for my Middle School library, but so funny I need to keep it. Storky, by D. L. Garfinkle, is the cleaner version of this (plus a great Scrabble sub-plot, for which I am a total sucker), but can't compete on the funny scale. Even if you're not a YA devotee, read it for the giggles. show less

The transition from middle school to high school is difficult in the best of circumstances. When you’ve got ADD, it’s even worse. Will Carter doesn’t have it easy. His mind wanders and when it does focus, it focuses mostly on girls.

The summer between middle school and high school has some surprises in store for Carter. The first surprise is that Abby, who was a tad chunky in middle school, has matured and looks great, with curves in all the right places. The second surprise is that she likes Carter. He may not die a virgin!!!!

But Carter is far from a pro at the whole girl thing. Tips from his sister, Lynn, on how to approach a girl helped him lasso Abby (not that she needed much lassoing). However, keeping Abby is another story. show more Seconds after declaring his love for her, he is manipulated into asking the coolest girl in the school, Amber Lee, to the homecoming dance. He’s oblivious to the fact that she merely needs a ride to the dance and her father thinks he’s cute.

Carter tries a multitude of things to get the girl. Football, swimming, parties, etc. And he screws up at every turn, but somehow, he comes out better than he was at the beginning. Finally, he does find his calling and peer pressure won’t deter him.

Carter Finally Gets It is Brent Crawford’s debut novel and it is laugh out loud funny. He has populated it with a cadre of Carter’s friends (EJ, Bag, Doc, J-Lo, Hormone) who add color to Carter’s already colorful escapades. The high school’s senior brutes like Scary Terry and Brock are a hoot and Carter can’t understand what Lynn sees in Brock. Carter just likes his truck. Abby’s girls (Amber Lee, Bitchy Nicky) are a force to be reckoned with. They stick up for each other…when they’re not stabbing each other in the back.

Anyone who went through puberty will relate to someone in Carter Finally Gets It. It is the perfect summertime read. So, Get It. show less

This book really captures horny teenage boys. It's super relatable and doesn't feel as if it was written by an older author, teens will definitely get a kick out of it! The story follows Carter as he enters his freshman year of high school. He's trying to fit in, lose his virginity, be good at sports, understand girls, and understand what the allure of drinking is. It's brutally honest and teenagers will absolutely relate with it. There is lewd and illicit behavior, cursing, cops, underage drinking and sex so some conservative teens and parents might not buy into this book, but I didn't think it detracted from the story, it just made it more believable. Laugh out loud funny and will bring back painful memories of high school for all who show more read it. show less

Oh my gosh, this book was over the top and I loved it. I was often repulsed by Carter and his actions, but he is so damn funny in his inner monologue, and he means the best--especially when you consider he's pretty much a normal teenage boy. I never was one myself, but I have to imagine that most of them have the same kind of thoughts Carter has. And of course, he does finally get it in the end and isn't so much of a jerk.

And now I also know why everyone raves about Nick Podehl's narrations. He was FANTASTIC. He uses every advantage he can with sound and is not afraid to scream if it's necessary. I can't wait to listen to another book narrated by him.

I waivered between 3&4 stars due to the voice. In the end the fact that Carter was so endearing won out. It was a great peak into the mind of the average teenage boy. The mistakes were heartbreaking and the triumphs, well triumphant.

As others have mentioned, the voice sometimes reads as a 30 year-old trying to talk like a 14 yearold by using "what the kids say on that MTV." Overall an impressive debut young adult novel.

In a phrase: strangely compelling meets fiercely flawed.

Will Carter, freshman, has Attention Deficit Disorder (or so he says) and the pressing desire to no longer be a virgin. He's got his sights set on Amber Lee, the untouchable hottie, but it appears he's destined to hook up with the previously chubby Abby who's body spent the summer moving all her baby fat to her chest.

Because Carter has ADD he finds himself easily distracted. It doesn't prevent him from joining the football team. Or being one of the area's top swimmers. Or from trying out and landing the lead in the school musical, all because his particular ADD requires Carter to maintain focus.

Along the way Carter and his crew find themselves at parties where houses are routinely show more destroyed by drink kids, cars are driven wildly by drunk teenage occupants, and are physically menaced by older psychopathic teens among the general population at school.

Oh, did I mention Carter has ADD?

Let me get this off my chest right now. Carter saying he has ADD doesn't make it so. He has problems staying on track, occasionally has to write things down on his hand, makes a lot of unfiltered comments that lead to hurt feelings... but it reads more like average teenage boy to me, not ADD. Additionally, Carter and his friends refer to friends, enemies, and each other as retards and faggots just as often as Carter calls himself ADD. In my experience, kids will adopt an affectation or self-diagnose themselves as a way of communicating to others that, what might seem like unusual behavior is in fact them working out who they are. A kid who refers to himself as psychotic or demented isn't necessarily either of those things, and what we look for in determining whether these characters are truly what they say they are in fiction is through their behavior.

So as Carter claims his disorder his behavior does not support this. His school has culled some of the more violent kids and placed them in special classes where their violence can be modified, and you would suspect the school would have learning specialists as well for kids with disabilities, but Carter has regular classes and goes about his life with everyone treating him normally. That isn't a bad thing, except that very little of Carter's issues are specific to ADD. He has difficulty with behaving or saying appropriate things, but hormones and dietary issues could just as easily be the cause. At one point later in the book, Carter is instructing his best friend EJ on how to pick up girls, a lesson his older sister has given him out of a shred of kindness and perhaps a recognition that her kid brother is a little different. When he tells EJ to ask questions and act disinterested, his best friend takes this instruction literally and combines the two to ask insulting questions of a girl who runs away in tears. Isolated from the rest of the book, a reader would assume EJ was the kid with problems, not Carter.

Putting that aside, I nearly gave up on this book a half dozen times. What starts as a series of vignettes about freshman life eventually begins to coalesce around a hundred pages in. It's around this time that I realized that Carter Finally Gets It is a boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl story trapped beneath all the excess baggage of a modern YA novel. The problem is, the story only works because of these excesses. If Carter and his nemesis Andre weren't both on the football team and the swim team, if Andre didn't steal Abby away from Carter, if Carter and Abby didn't wind up as leads opposite one another in the school play... man, that's a lot of 'ifs' piled up there.

Additionally, I'd hate to assume so calculated a move, but this and a few other books I've seen this season seem to rely on horny, raunchy boys to appeal to its audience. The argument that "this is how kids talk today" doesn't work here. Hanging around and listening to a bunch of teens talking at a pizza joint may be authentic, but it doesn't actually provide us any insight into their personalities. Aside from verite reportage, steeping a story in the language of teens without making each voice equally unique smacks of a certain level of pandering. Also, don't we have enough problems with boys objectifying and badmouthing girls based on looks? Do we really need books to be so "authentic" that they continue to perpetrate and reinforce chauvinistic behavior?

You would think after all this that I would hate Carter Finally Gets It, but I don't. There is a level of bumbling boy comedy here that I really enjoyed, that haplessness that is the providence of teen boys who just haven't yet figured out how clueless they are. Scenes of Carter riding everywhere on his bike because he's too young to drive slayed me for a variety of personal reasons, not the least of which was because of how close to home they hit. And the cruelty of girls who use the unwitting Carter as a foil for getting around watchful parents is a priceless bit of chicanery that Carter, unfortunately, deserves.

Like I said, I could have dumped this anywhere along the way in the first hundred pages – and that's an awful lot to ask of a reader to go along with – but following that I had a hard time stopping. As flawed as it is compelling, the book should neutralize itself but somehow manages to tip the scales toward readability.

Others have found this LMAO funny and don't seem to have the same problems I have with the book, so proceed accordingly. show less