An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

 An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green, 343 pages.

When April May first sees the giant robot statue in the middle of the night walking home she almost keeps, before she chastises herself for not properly appreciating something really cool and decides to call a friend to make a video about it instead, dubbing the statue Carl. She never expected the video to amount to much, but it turns out New York Carl is one of many, many Carls that popped up simultaneously all around the world, and by being one of the first to talk about it she is catapulted to instant celebrity. Soon April is addicted to the rush of fame, and April May (the person) is subsumed by April May (the brand), and as the phenomenon of the Carls keeps getting weirder, April finds herself stuck right in the middle.

This was a really cool novel. It was engaging and fun, and I feel like it had a real clarity about the kinds of issues it wanted to be in conversation with. My only real complaint is that April May repeatedly feels like she's learning the same lesson over and over again, and instead keeps making the exact same mistakes. But! I do still think this was a cool book overall, and the ending feels like it wants to lead directly into the next book, so I expect I'll be writing about that before too long.

Fun Fact: If you spend much time on YouTube you might already know Hank Green, who has produced SO many shows on there for SO many years. You might also know him as the brother of more famous novelist John Green.