The town I grew up in was just this side of rural by the time I hit high school: they put up the first full stoplight (not just a blinking red or yellow) when I was in eighth grade. Our first McDonald's came that year too, or the year after. I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if we'd had the internet in high school. The internet was around when I was in high school, of course (I graduated in 2003). Everyone had an email address, and (more importantly) an AIM screen name. But the internet was dial-up, and unless you had two phone lines at your house, you couldn't be constantly online or no one would be able to make calls. What I mean was if we'd had the internet like today, constant availability and access. I used books and movies to escape the limits of my experience as a high schooler, but if I were in high school today, I have to imagine I'd have been an active blog reader and probably a blogger myself.

Which is why I think I connected so hard with Lydia, one of the three rural Tennessee high school students at the heart of The Serpent King. Lydia reminds me of myself in high school...that feeling that you were destined for something greater than what Belle in Beauty and the Beast referred to as "this provincial life" (Belle's kind of a snob when I think back to that movie). Thinking that you were smarter than the people around you, and that somehow made you better than them. While I had a little bit of a hard time buying that Lydia wouldn't have at least some social interest from her peers solely by virtue of her fashion-blogger access to fancy things, she was such a well-drawn character and her emotional truth resonated enough to make this merely a quibble.

Her two best friends and fellow outcasts: Dill, the son of a Pentecostal minister serving time for possession of child pornography, and Travis, a hulking, gentle soul who immerses himself in a Song of Fire and Ice-esque fantasy series, are trying to navigate their senior year. Senior year of high school is such an emotionally-charged time of life, where you start really thinking about The Future in a real way for the first time. The K-12 schooling that has been your entire life since you can remember is about to be over, and the future can feel both overwhelmingly wide and incredibly narrow at the same time. Everything is tinged with a kind of premature nostalgia because you know it's ending. The Serpent King captures the feeling of senior year with such assuredness and beauty that it took me straight back there mentally...I found myself pondering what senior-year me would think about the life I've ended up with, what I would have been like as a senior if I graduated ten years later, trying to figure out what ever became of people that I haven't even thought about in ages.

This is the best high-school experience novel I've read since The Perks Of Being A Wallflower. Chbosky's novel has become a modern-day classic, and I don't see any reason why The Serpent King shouldn't do the same. Strong characters and a beautifully-told, powerful story. A must-read. ( )

So my friends recommended this book to me. At first I was a little McMad about reading it, because it's about Pentecostal Christianity and abusive fathers, both subjects that hit a little close to home for me. And it's a slow burn, so it took me a while to get through it. Lydia and Dill both come off a little annoying at the start, but Travis struck me as the type of kid I went to high school with, so his character at least felt familiar. Dill and Travis both have unstable family lives and darkness within them, balanced out by Lydia's near-perfect existence. But I found the internal struggle the characters go through to be compelling. Much of the story is about the weight of parental and social pressure for the small-town working class. All three characters deal with questions of familial responsibility, college, and charting a path to adulthood, even if it goes against parents' expectations. All in all it's a sad but hopeful read. ( )

So I bought book online and they omitted that it was a YA book. For once I am glad they did. This is a fantastic book, the kind that kids should read in school to get them to like reading, rather than “the classics” which usually bore the crap out of most kids. This book doesn’t try to be hip, it tells a fantastic story about 3 best friends Dill, Travis, and Lydia, trying to figure out life in the 21st century with deeply flawed parents in two instances and one friend who doesn’t recognize the love the other two have for her.
Excellent book. ( )

Jeff Zentner has some powerful writing ability. I was so wrapped up in the story that I actually felt heart-pounding anger several times; other times tears were flowing and my heart was breaking.

Because the thing is, this is fiction yet it isn't. Things that happen in this novel are not just made up, they are real things, happening every day in homes across this country. Kids are treated badly by their parents, their life choices are restricted by harsh and punitive theology, or they are trapped in economic circumstances that they are powerless to change -- and they face the rest of their lives with little hope of anything better.

It's a sobering story that has me wondering how many times I've failed to pick up on subtle signs that would have told me, "hey, this kid needs a friend."

Awesome work, Mr. Zentner.
( )

I did most of this book on audio, but with 3 readers who all portrayed multiple characters differently, I don't recommend doing it that way. It's a testament to the author that his fine writing was more powerful than the mixed bag of narration on audio.
Boy, this was rough. For a good chunk of the book, suffering along with Travis and Dill was really hard to take. I drove back and forth to work, yelling, swearing and crying as I listened.
Because I listened to it, I haven't been able to find all the quotes I loved, but I do have two. The first one is said by the wonderful Travis to Dill.

"We need to take care of each other from now on. We need to be each other's family because ours are so messed up. We need to make better lives for ourselves. We gotta start doing stuff we're afraid to do."

And the other quote I loved was when Dill finally had an answer to the pressure his mother was putting on him to have more faith and stay in Forrestville.

"I don't expect you to understand. This is the spirit of God moving in me. This is a sign of my faith. I did this to save myself."

OK, I just remembered one more I need to share, because who can resist the hero finally putting the bully in his place?

"You think you can cause me pain after what I've lived through? Go on. Hit me with your little fist."

Great book. Worthy of any awards it has won or has yet to win. ( )