Recommended: NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO
This book was insulting to women for the way they are treated and viewed, and insulting to men for the idiotic and disgusting way they are portrayed as acting. I believe "vile" or "foul" would be a great way to sum this book up.

Beyond the outright misogyny and objectification here, it was genuinely idiotic. The magic liquid needed is Mountain Dew? Was this written by a horny fourteen year old? Because that is exactly what it felt like. This seems like something a lonely, horny fourteen year old boy might write.

The fact that it gets praise and has been adapted into a musical is vaguely terrifying to me. I don't understand if those reading this are just also misogynistic idiots, and so love it because it reflects them, or if they are somehow desperately blind to that entirely, which is possibly worse. ( )

I like the concept of the book - uncool high school boy eats (installs?) computer chip which teaches him how to be cool.

Had trouble connecting with the characters which did some unlikable stuff throughout the book. And maybe it's just an editing part ...but I hated the f__k__ up way that they edited out the adult words.



( )

I've been listening to the Be More Chill original musical cast recording and enjoying the sound of the music while not necessarily understanding all the words yet. (Living with me is a hellish experience of hearing songs sung with the lyrics I think I heard or improving the lyrics to what I think they should be.) Since I probably won't have a chance to see the actual show for quite a while yet, I thought I'd read the original book to help me understand the plot. Also, there's a graphic novel adaptation I want to read next.

So, yeah, this book is sexist crap. A nerdy, lustful teen boy swallows a mind-reading micro quantum computer to teach him to become a cool womanizer. This plot was old when Jerry Lewis swallowed a serum to become Buddy Love. It's Cyrano de Bergerac tossing his heart and wandering into John Hughes' Weird Science.

For a bit of shock value, Keanu Reeves and Eminem are referenced in bizarre ways.

From what I can glean from my first listen of the album, the plot of the musical was tweaked in several ways. I'm going to read the CD booklet to find out exactly what I've not been hearing. Regardless, some of the songs are catchy, and I can always fix them when I sing along in the future. ( )

This book teaches you to treat people like shit, do drugs, steal from your parents, and suck on infected nipples.

A teen dork gets a computer in his head that tells him what to do and how to be cool. Kind of like “Upgrade” without the body control or “Venom” without the symbiote. The computer is a huge asshole, which is pretty much what I expected. Its only purpose is to get our hero to climb the social ladder, with no regard for the little people or whose feelings get hurt along the way. You’ve seen this in sitcoms all the time. It’s like “pick-up artistry for kids”.

All girls are sluts, all guys are horndogs, all adults are useless. Even the dad calls everything “gay”. Aren’t we passed that already? I can’t believe this book got so many awards for being “realistic teen fiction”. There are way more parties and drugs than there should be. All this book does is encourage the “I have to dress the way everyone does, I have to talk the way everyone does” groupthink mentality that turns everyone into Abercrombie zombies.

The worst part is the ending. I can’t talk about it without spoiling so stop reading this paragraph. The computer advises him to break character in the middle of the play, a play that’s been going on since the beginning of the novel, and announce his love for this girl he’s been pining for all the time (basically the high school equivalent of a marriage proposal). Also this takes place a day after two students were burned in a house fire. And the computer thinks it’s a good idea to, at this exact time, announce himself to everyone in the audience and take all the attention away from grief for the burn victims, the people who’ve been working on the play, the audience who came to see it, and make it all about him. It’s the dumbest plot point I ever saw. No one in their right mind would advise that kind of move. ELIZA has more intelligence than that.

I don’t think the author hates women, but he doesn’t know how to write women. All he knows is what he thought women were in high school, or what is gleaned from “Beverly Hills 90210” and “Sixteen Candles“. Checkout “Booksmart” for a better example of nerds trying to party that isn’t so misogynistic. This is what we talk about when we say “the author’s responsibility”. ( )

Nothing substantial really happened to the main character even after getting the squip? I mean a few characters were nicer to him but the biggest turning point was him embarrassing himself at the play. I was surprised at the lack of thrust the introduction of the squip had on the narrative ( )