How to Win at High School

March 2, 2015
Starting his junior year at new school, Adam Higgs is a loser, and he knows it. He barely has any friends, has never been kissed, and has started working at Pizza Hut. After Adam devises a lucrative homework-selling scheme, suddenly he has an adorable girlfriend and is getting invited to the best parties, but this taste of fame and wealth leads him down a path of escalating risk, selling fake IDs and drugs. In chapters often no longer than a few paragraphs, Matthews (who writes adult thrillers as Owen Laukkanen) employs an irreverent narrative that makes it seem as though readers are seeing Adam through the shrewd perspective of a slacker sitting in the back of class ("You probably figured this out already, but, our boy doesn't get to many partiesâ). Witnessing Adam's descent into delinquency is both painful to watch and addictive. Straddling poetry and prose, the funny, unforgiving narration will have readers glued to this story about the rise and fall of an unlikely high school kingpin. Ages 14âup. Agent: Stacia Decker, Donald Maass Literary Agency.

December 15, 2014
An enterprising loser hustles his way to ultimate popularity, at a cost.Adam's older brother, Sam, was a star hockey player in his high school years, and by all rights, his younger brother should have been a high school god. Instead, Sam is paralyzed after a nasty body slam, and Adam is a wannabe in off-brand clothes who can't score an invite to a single party. Tired of sitting at home playing video games and watching Scarface-the plot of which is handily and self-consciously summarized for readers who haven't seen it-Adam launches a scheme to make himself useful to the school's elite, initially by doing homework for pay. As his empire of term papers, booze and fake IDs grows, so does his status. The third-person narrative voice is slick, breezy and highly stylized, littered with hashtags and phrases like "our boy" and "Achievement Unlocked." Chapters are short-none more than a couple of pages and some only a single line-creating a fast-moving and suspenseful tale. The unquestioned intensity with which the narrative voice despises Adam's nerdiness and pities Sam for his disability is at first troubling, but it soon becomes clear that these views are Adam's and that the overall story offers a more complex view. For all its slick hipness, surprisingly substantive. (Fiction. 14-18)

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December 1, 2014

Gr 7 Up-As a junior transfer student, Adam Higgs is just another high school loser. Influenced by his younger sister and older brother's high school popularity and wanting to make up for a tragic accident, Adam pulls inspiration from Scarface's Tony Montana in his quest to become one of the "gods" of Nixon Collegiate. Adam's first step to popularity is a job at Pizza Hut to earn money for stylish clothes and the nickname of "Pizza Man." After a few missteps, Adam climbs the social ladder while making money doing homework assignments for the popular kids. Throughout the book, the teen raises his stakes by going to a clubs, getting a pretty girlfriend, hiring a team of loser nerds to assist with his increasingly popular homework business, selling fake IDs, going to parties, selling pills, and abusing drugs and alcohol. All the while, Adam's siblings and girlfriend, Victoria Lemieux, are the quiet voices of reason trying to assure him that being happy with himself is the real key to happiness. While Matthews's debut YA novel has a fast plot with gritty content and dialogue that will appeal to teens, his characters are flat and Adam's quest for popularity and attitude of, "Money is money. Power is power. Prestige is everything" fail to bring much depth to the protagonist's cautionary tale.-Adrienne L. Strock, Nashville Public Library

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2015
Grades 9-12 Seventeen-year-old Adam has always been a loser. When a move lands Adam in a new high school, he decides it is time to remake himself and rise to god status. He accomplishes this through homeworkdoing the homework of the uberpopular kids, that is. He then moves to supplying booze and pills, and that gains him the popularity and the party invites he craves, but it also costs himhis relationships suffer, he gets no sleep, and the local drug lord is tailing him around town. But it's all worth it, right? Short chapters, interspersed with Adam's conflicting inner thoughts, and a fast-moving plot make this hefty tome a surprisingly fast read. Except for Adam, the characters are rather flat and stereotypical, but still the story works. To his credit, Matthews does not offer a pat, lesson-learned ending, nor does he let Adam off scot-free. Though it has predictable moments, this novel nonetheless will have appeal to those middling teens who wish they knew how to become a high-school god.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)