My Most Excellent Year: A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins & Fenway Park by Steve Kluger 403 pages

Have you ever started reading a book and then thought, this seems so familiar? Could I have already read this? Well, a patron recently told me how much she and her daughter enjoyed this book. The title seemed vaguely familiar but it did not appear on the list of books that I had read. So, I put it on reserve. I did get the read before vibes, but it wasn't until about page 75 that I was sure I had read it. Did I put it down, especially since I had another 4 books packed for the car trip? No. I read it all the way to the end. In short, it is a coming of age story for a high schooler, TC. He is just starting to come out of his shell and discover other people that he wants to connect to in a meaningful way. He lives with his Dad; his mother died when he was quite young and both the guys are having a hard time getting over her death. He wants to connect with a smart new student, Alejandra Perez, daughter of a foreign ambassador and a hearing impaired orphan, Hucky. The book is told by several point of views: TJ, his dad (who has the hots for TJ's high school advisor), Augie (his best friend who is just about to come out of the closet after falling for a fellow classmate), and Alejandra. It is quite smart and cleverly formatted, using many forms of communication: journals, emails, letters, printed materials.