Carter Finally Gets It by Brent Crawford

Carter is a fourteen year-old freshman just entering high school. Carter's pretty popular, has lots of friends, and is fairly athletic (he plays football and swims with pretty good results for a freshman). Like most freshmen, however, he's primarily concerned with getting hot girls and not looking "gay" in front of his friends. Early on, he has some success with the ladies (thanks partly to the tutelage of his older sister), but due to his general ineptness because of being 14, a guy, and having ADD, he manages to screw things up with girls so that pretty much all of the cheer-leading squad and drill team hate him. The book follows him throughout his freshman year, through football season, swim season, and baseball season/the spring theatre musical. The title of the book should give you sense of where the book is going and how Carter is developing.

I loved this book. It was hilarious. Guys and girls check it out from the library, and it's appealing to both. I'm really happy to recommend it to guys because I think it pretty accurately (if somewhat politically incorrectly or insensitively at times) portrays how a freshman guy thinks, and there are lots of embarrassing moments, flatulence, and porn-watching to satisfy.

Furthermore, I listened to the audio version of the book. Nick Podehl does an AMAZING job as the narrator. This is by far one of my favorite audiobooks now. He sounds like a freshman guy, and he really brings the narration and dialogue to life. I was laughing out loud listening to it, especially when he was doing "Bitchy Nikki's" dialogue.

I'm excited to see that a sequel, Carter's Big Break, is due out soon. Brent Crawford's site says April, but Follett and Amazon say June 1. Now, how can I get my hands on an ARC?