Review: How to Say Goodbye in Robot - Natalie Standiford

Where I got it: ARC
Rating: 4 stars
Cover Rating: 3 stars (I love the pink very eye-catching but overall... meh.)
Genre: Young Adult
Publication Date: October 1, 2009
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Page Count: 276 p.

Bea has moved to yet another new town, and thanks to alphabetical seating she gets stuck by a weird kid and a perky girl. At first she becomes friends with the girl, but after getting a note from her "future self" with a radio station on it (actually from Jonah, the weird kid) she starts to relate more with Jonah. When her and Jonah start spending more time together, he seems more alive and less like the ghost boy everyone remembers. Bea's feelings even start to emerge and make her feel less like a robot girl. But when Jonah finds out a secret that his dad has been keeping from him, his priorities change and Bea is left not knowing where she stands. So buckle up for a magic carpet ride of radio waves and lots of secret agent stuff(not really).

This was a great book that was sometimes laugh out loud funny. There were sad parts, but it was overall so enjoyable that you could just keep on moving through. I loved that this was based around them listening to some AM late night radio show. It's just so quirky and fun. I love all the crazy characters they get to meet and how real they all seem. You hear about one of the radio people and you think "I know someone like that". The only thing that didn't really make sense to me was how Bea and Jonah started hanging out. Jonah didn't talk to anyone for like a bajillion years and then all of a sudden he decides to be friends with Bea. Granted it was a chance for him to start over since she didn't already know him, but it still seemed to happen very fast. Other than that, this book was excellent and I definitely give it the go ahead for you to pick up your own copy and read it. All of the characters are like-able in some way. So Happy Reading!

First Line:
"Goebbels materialized on the back patio, right before we moved to Baltimore, and started chewing through the wicker love seat."

Favorite Line:
"I imagined a neighborhood Legend of the Unicorn Child, about a one-horned little boy who'd died tragically, hit by a car or shot by a mugger or maybe poisoned by lawn pesticides."