Noggin

Noggin

John Corey Whaley

Published: April 8, 2014
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
My copy is a..... Hardback I bought

Goodreads 

Summary: Listen — Travis Coates was alive once and then he wasn’t. Now he’s alive again. Simple as that. The in between part is still a little fuzzy, but he can tell you that, at some point or another, his head got chopped off and shoved into a freezer in Denver, Colorado. Five years later, it was reattached to some other guy’s body, and well, here he is. Despite all logic, he’s still 16 and everything and everyone around him has changed. That includes his bedroom, his parents, his best friend, and his girlfriend. Or maybe she’s not his girlfriend anymore? That’s a bit fuzzy too. Looks like if the new Travis and the old Travis are ever going to find a way to exist together, then there are going to be a few more scars. Oh well, you only live twice.

I would have never read this book if I hadn’t seen a panel with John Corey Whaley on it. I am so happy I did see him because this book is amazing. Noggin was amazingly funny. The way Travis dealt with all the changes that happned while he was dead was so pure with no ulterior motive. He just wanted his life to be how it was before he got sick.

In a lot of books similar to this I saw that I wish there had been more of a background. With Noggin I didn’t think this once. The story starts with him waking up, no longer dead. If there had been chapters from before he died it would have felt out of placed. There were flashbacks throughout the book of before he died and it was enough that we got a sense of his life pre-death.

Characters:

Travis: When Travis woke up he expected for everyone to have not moved on, to have waited and stopped his or her lives while he was away. Yet when he slowly realized that hadn’t happened and his best fried, Kyle, wouldn’t be in his math class and his girlfriend was engaged, to a man other than him. He dealt with the majority of the changes as well as he could. In some ways people expected him to act the age he would be if he didn’t die.

Verdict:

3.5 stars

This book is hilarious and defiantly worth a read.