Review: The Edumacation of Jay Baker

The Edumacation of Jay Baker by Jay Clark
Release Date ~ January 31, 2012
Henry Holt & Company ~ Macmillan
ISBN13: 9780805092561
ARC received from Raincoast Books for review

Goodreads Description:
A few "sexy" bullet points about Jay:
- He is in love with a cheerleader named Cameo "Appearance" Parnell
- He is forever losing "Love-15" to tennis-playing goddess Caroline Richardson
- He rocks a touche array of pop-culture references, jokes, and puns
- His family-life cookie is about to crumble.

Live vicariously through Jay as he faces off against his mortal enemy, gets awkward around his dream girl(s), loses his marbles in a Bermudian love triangle, watches his parents' relationship implode, and, finally, learns to get real and be himself(ish).

1. Strong main character:
   One thing I really liked about Jay Baker as a character was that even though he felt totally confused and overwhelmed at the changing circumstances in his life, he doesn't just sit around and mope about it. He's constantly trying to tackle these problems head on and deal with them- not always in the most mature way, but he tries.
2. Humour GALORE:
   This book is just filled with witty one-liners, which genuinely adds to Jay's personality. I think it's great to see a book character with such a rich sense of humour, And it seemed like every other character in the book felt like they  had to keep up with him, and the dialogue ends up being a lot of banter back and forth.

But at the same time, that was one of my main problems with the book. There were too many times when I just didn't connect with that exact sense of humour, and I found relatively few of the jokes and lines to be actually funny. And the banter struck me as more unbelievable than an episode of Gilmore Girls featuring Lorelai and Rory.

And I didn't feel that the problems were really resolved by the end either; it seemed like characters spend most of the book working towards one thing, just undo it all in the last few chapters. So I liked that it tackled some common teenage problems in a different way (see: a character who doesn't mope around for 300 pages) and I appreciated that it took a humorous approach, but it just didn't quite work for me the way I hoped it would.